Shinro Ohtake: Retina

The Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (MIMOCA) is pleased to present Shinro Ohtake’s (b. 1955) first solo exhibition at the museum in 12 years, following  Shinro Ohtake: NEWNEW  in 2013. Ohtake began exhibiting in the late 1970s, and has since participated in major international exhibitions including Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s documenta 13 (Germany) and Massimiliano Gioni’s 55th Venice Biennale (Italy). He has had numerous exhibitions both in Japan and overseas, including a large-scale solo show that opened at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and traveled to venues in Ehime and Toyama. Spanning nearly half a century, his practice has produced an immense and diverse output driven by staggering creative energy. Among his vast body of work, this exhibition focuses on the Retina series as a lens for deeper exploration of Ohtake’s unique world.

Retina was conceived in Ohtake’s studio in Uwajima, Ehime, where he relocated in 1988. He worked intensively on this series through the early 1990s, and has continued developing it alongside other groups of works ever since. The retina is a thin, transparent membrane at the back of the eye that detects light and transmits visual information to the brain via the optic nerve. Ohtake gave this name to a group of paintings in which he greatly enlarged discarded Polaroid test film bearing traces of light, and coated the surfaces with a layer of clear urethane resin. Two distinct elements – the plane of the photographic image and the transparent coating – are unified through the viewer’s retina, coming together in the mind as new images that carry vestiges of time and memory. In the new Retina works now in progress, Ohtake’s series continues to evolve. Photosensitive materials, left to age and deteriorate over long periods of time, are visually imprinted with that very passage of time, and as the images are covered in many layers of transparent coating, the scenes that emerge from Retina continue to stir viewers as if evoking untapped memories.

In addition to 12 ambitious new Retina works, the exhibition centers on a new relief work approximately three meters tall that incorporates sound and light into the Retina series, as well as a group of works anchored by a large, previously unexhibited Retina from the early 1990s. The core of the exhibition consists of works that maintain an ongoing dialogue with Retina through the lenses of time and memory, including the large-scale installation Retinamnesia Filtration Shed, now realized at the scale originally envisioned; the ongoing gouache series, begun in the mid-2010s; and the oil painting series. We invite you to explore the mesmerizing, ever-growing world of Ohtake’s series, which encompasses a huge number of works that connect the eyes, film, and photography to the concept of the Retina series.

MIMOCA has held more than 150 exhibitions, but this will be one of the largest and most densely configured in its history. It also marks a major milestone in Ohtake’s practice, reflecting his current position while suggesting directions his work may take in the future.

Curated by Koichi Nakata, Kanako Furuno, Madoka Matsumura. Organized by Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, “Setouchi Art Museum Link” Project (office: Fukutake Foundation) , Japan Arts Council, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan.

Access to MIMOCA: Visit here.