Kaz Oshiro, Trash Bin, 2003, crylic on stretched canvas over wood, courtesy of Rosamund Felsen Gallery.
L.A.-based Japanese artist, Kaz Oshiro will present a work for the lounge, contributing to the SI’s exploration of the possibilities for painting after the end of painting, which will culminate with next year’s Last Painting show, to be curated by Olivier Mosset. Oshiro uses his painted canvases as building blocks for trompe l’oeil sculptures. But unlike Swiss tricksters Fischli & Weiss, Oshiro reveals his method openly, making for the unusual combination of earnestness and appropriation.
Kaz Oshiro was born in occupied Okinawa, Japan. He lives in Los Angeles. Oshiro makes flawless trompe l’oeil replicas of American sub-cultural artifacts: Marshall amps, Fender stacks, sticker-festooned car bumpers, appliances. Oshiro is acutely aware of the compromises cultural engagement entails. In a contemporary reformulation of Rauchenberg’s famous dictum regarding his work’s position between art and life Oshiro pretends, trying to “hate somthing that I like and like something that I hate. I hope to create Post-Pop Art (painting) that juxtaposes Pop and Minimalism with the flavor of Neo-Geo, appropriation, and Photorealism, and present them as a still life of my generation.”