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FLOWERS GALLERY - ARTIST: Jiro Osuga

441 views · Published 10 April 2015 · 7:38 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: NYC GALLERY OPENINGS · 2015 · Entertainment

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GALLERY NYC: http://nycgalleryopenings.com

JIRO OSUGA
The Theatre of the World
April 9 - May 9, 2015

Flowers Gallery is pleased to announce 
the first solo presentation by London, UK-
based artist, Jiro Osuga at Flowers, New 
York.

The title of the exhibition is derived from a 
painting made over twenty years ago 
while Osuga was still a student at art 
school.  Back then, dissatisfied with the 
small intricate paintings that he was 
making, Osuga took a nine foot piece of 
unstretched canvas and started filling it 
ad hoc with observations of the world 
around him.  Over the next three weeks 
the huge canvas gradually filled up with 
an encyclopedic array of images - of 
market stalls, restaurants, flora, fauna and 
the solar system, until eventually, a 
proscenium arch and an auditorium 
emerged, transforming the painting into a 
theater in which the whole world was 
presented on the stage.

The 'world as theater' has remained a key 
metaphor in Osuga's work ever since.  
Individual scenes from the original 
painting have kept on reappearing on 
smaller canvases over the subsequent two 
decades, and have supplied the content 
for the recent paintings included in this 
show.  Osuga is fascinated by what he 
describes as "the maddening richness and 
complexity of the World".  Exploring 
everything from day-to-day activities to 
dreams and nightmares, he draws upon 
his life experiences, both in his native 
Tokyo and London, to create what is 
cumulatively a complete microcosmic 
stage.

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