Aya Ogasawara
Aya Ogasawara is a representational painter born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. Through her well-traveled and highly educated parents, Ogasawara was exposed to Western culture at an early age and attended a Roman Catholic school in Japan to obtain a well-rounded education. After pursuing fine art throughout high school, in 2007, Ogasawara moved to New York City to continue her art education. She studied at the Parsons School of Design and the Art Students League of New York. Art Bastion represented the artist at the conclusion of her studies until she pursued a study abroad stint with the Paris American Academy in Paris, France, in 2012. The artist is currently represented by Winterhouse Projects.
Artist Statement
Memory and Mirage is a collection of artworks that evoke Ogasawara’s suggestion of the sublime within allegorical rhapsodies that celebrate femininity. Through a Northern Renaissance lens, her mythological treatment of figures reveals pale, translucent skin redolent of Jan Van Eyck and the Flemish Renaissance masters. Ritual plays a key role in the gestures of these figures, exhibiting a religious, almost regal, bearing. The artist draws from the experience of young girls transforming into women.
Encountering Medieval and Renaissance masterpieces while residing in Paris, Ogasawara reconsidered these female figures within the iconography of religious paintings, reframing these symbols to fit an alluring, mysterious vision of young girls ascending into adulthood. While Ogasawara’s formal approach heavily indicates the influence of Northern Renaissance masters and a minimal Japanese aesthetic, her subject matter is decidedly Surrealist.
Taking cues from the stylistic flourishes of Paul Delvaux and Remedios Varo, Ogasawara juxtaposes everyday objects and Mannerist actions into compelling compositions. Arranging figures amid a swath of negative space, the scenes are arranged in the manner of Edo period Japan’s Maruyama-Shijō school, with objects prominently featured against the backdrop of negative space. The artist also alludes to the natural world with plants and leaves incorporated throughout the compositions, another reference to the naturalist tendencies applied by the Shijō school.
Infused with the psychological underpinnings of modern Surrealism, these paintings distill the unsettling experience of adolescence into concise, sublime configurations.
https://winterhouseprojects.com/aya-ogasawara/
