Tam Ochiai

Team Gallery, New York
Through November 11

The work of Tam Ochiai, a young Japanese artist who has lived in New York for several years, reveals a strong interest in contemporary western culture. His art is inspired by themes ranging from French literature and the films of Godard and Truffaut, to the world of fashion and advertising. The result is installations, videos, photographs and paintings rooted in the same symbolic language.

The last series of work in the show is a cycle of thirteen paintings. A free interpretation of the book Histoire d’Oeil (The History of the Eye, 1928), by French writer Georges Bataille, they present images and words taken from the text, but offer no story line. As in past works, these new pieces are characterized by an obsessive repetition of certain elements. Each painting has three titles. One is inspired by the French text. Another is relevant to the subject of the piece itself. The last plays on the assonance of words, such as ‘cut’ and ‘cat’, or the free association of ideas.

The canvases depict close up images of ‘Lolitas’, who might easily have just fled from a fashion designer’s sketchbook. Their thin faces are sketched with only the barest of pencil marks; their gaze quite impenetrable, never meeting that of the onlooker; their appearance lofty, unapproachable. All of which, combined with a marked similarity in their facial features, and the imposing scale of the canvases, transforms these young adolescents into icons of contemporary culture.

On closer examination, we can make out some sentences scrawled in pencil on the surface of the paintings. In them the artist makes fun of his own creations, and provokes the observer at the same time, with expressions such as: “do you need a hair cat?”, “cat need hair cat”, “I want to cat my hair” and “can you cat my hair?”. It’s the bright blotches of paint forming the clothes and hairstyles that stand out in the composition. At times these are executed with nervous and disjointed brushstrokes, at others with steady uniformity. In both cases, it’s possible to make out the influence of American Color Field painting and Pop Culture, advertising posters and design in particular.

As though we are leafing through the pages of a book, each work seems to become richer and more whole as a direct consequence of our passing from one painting to the next hanging at its side.




Micaela Giovannotti
Translation by Rosalind Furness