Virtually experience Oscar Oiwa in Paradise: Drawing the Ephemeral on YouTube
Balancing immense scale with cozy intimacy, Oscar Oiwa’s installation invites us into an imagined world of forest pathways, stone walls, and churning skies. The colossal piece is a gorgeous 360-degree drawing created on the interior walls of a 40-foot inflatable vinyl balloon. It took Oiwa, his assistants, and the simplest of tools – 120 marker pens – to complete the final piece.
Oscar Oiwa’s influences are cross-cultural and multidisciplinary. He was born in Brazil and has lived and worked in São Paulo, Tokyo, London, and New York. Much of his work addresses urban chaos and political upheaval, but here Oscar Oiwa in Paradise gives us a nest of calm and safety: an apt and welcome offering for the times. The viewer is surrounded by the work, invited in to experience it physically. This artist-created realm serves to remind us of how easily we can be transported to another place through our imagination.
It is hard to pinpoint what it is that is so powerful about Oiwa’s installation. Disparate things come to mind: the Paleolithic Lascaux cave paintings, a carnival funhouse, Peter Weir’s film The Truman Show, and even our most recent forced “reality” of virtual gatherings. This manufactured environment highlights the kinship between the real and the imagined, with the imagined always front and center.
Oscar Oiwa is participating in the online exhibition Beyond the Lines through the Japan Foundation and recently exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Oiwa has been the recipient of many awards and distinctions including a Guggenheim fellowship, an Asian Cultural Council grant, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. The artist can be reached through his website.