First published in frieze
Chiho Aoshima
Blum & Poe Gallery, Los Angeles
The doe-eyed ingénues
in Chiho Aoshima’s digital drawings seem to emerge from beyond nature
itself. It’s as if they were born whole within a garden of unreality populated
by themes milled from centuries of Japanese culture, ranging from Edo scrolls
to Sailor Moon. Seamlessly integrating traditional Japanese landscapes and Zen-inspired
motifs such as animals, birds, flowers, insects, ghosts and demons with the
kawaii or ‘cute’ imagery which permeates contemporary Japanese
pop culture, the five exquisitely rendered, large-format digital prints included
in Aoshima’s first solo exhibition challenge the boundaries between fine
art and popular art while also acknowledging the influence of traditional painting.
Paradoxes abound. Technology, it would seem, has surpassed even nature with
its achievement of perfection.
A Chinese artist from the early 17th century commented,
‘the distinguished modern artists never paint one stroke that is not like
the ancients. But to be absolutely like the ancients is to be not like them
at all. It is not even painting.’ In addition to her appropriation of
Japanese design elements, Aoshima utilizes the stylistic conventions of 18th-century
scroll painters and printmakers in creating luminous, cunningly balanced compositions.
She begins by drawing small sections on her computer using Adobe Illustrator,
taking particular care with her rendering of organic forms, such as vines, to
ensure every whorl and curve has a natural feel. Specific elements of a drawing
may be archived and reinserted where needed. After the line drawings are complete,
Aoshima applies colour and sets the data, then prints the sections out and arranges
them into their final configuration, which she designs as a whole at the end
of the process.
For the past several years Aoshima has worked
as an artist and in-house computer technician for Takashi Murakami, the progenitor
of Superflat, at his Hiropon Factory in Tokyo. Though she was never formally
trained, she possesses an awe-inspiring eye for detail. From these works installed
chronologically in the gallery’s two rooms the rapid evolution and increasing
complexity of her vision are evident. Paradise (1999), the show’s
earliest piece, is also its most conventional, despite the proliferation of
naked girls lolling with fauns next to a rainbow-lit stream. Her obsessive attention
to detail and attraction to the morbid is well illustrated in Mushroom Room
(2000). Within a dripping violet and purple annulus a naked girl lies on her
back in bed, staring wide-eyed up at the ceiling as a multitude of spotted mushrooms
colonize her room. Next to the bed is a stack of books, whose titles seem to
mirror the girl’s mute thoughts – Don’t Die, I
Want To Go Somewhere For Play and When Will You Make It Wait For Me?
The expansive, all-over compositions of Aoshima’s
gorgeous, horizontally formatted murals The Birth of a Giant Zombie
(2001), the exhibition’s most recent work, and The Red-Eyed Tribe
(2000), probably her best-known piece, have been compared to Henry Darger’s
epic productions. Originally designed as an invitation to an Issey Miyake fashion
show, The Red-Eyed Tribe was blown up to a whopping 15 x 52 feet and
filled an entire wall at Murakami’s ‘Superflat’ exhibition
in 2000. In this exhibition the print is smaller, but no level of detail is
sacrificed in the shift of scale. As with Darger’s massive murals of the
fictional Vivian sisters, the works depict droves of pale, wispy-haired waifs
draped in filmy, translucent gowns that accentuate their unity as well as their
vulnerability. Adrift yet static within undulating landscapes that seem to reverberate
with cool light, soft colour and the vibrant patterns that surround them, the
girls seem insubstantial and transient: tissue paper dolls too flimsy even to
fathom desire. Yet in The Red-Eyed Tribe there is a hint of disorder
just beneath the surface of all that crystalline splendour: a crimson malice
is reflected briefly in the shallow pools of the nymphs’ bloodshot eyes,
transforming them into a murderous coven of bloodless Children of the Damned.
In The Birth of a Giant Zombie chaos
has seared through the surface dimension, corroding and consuming everything
in its path. A befuddled teenage succubus with the apparent destructive power
of anti-matter kneels in the midst of an ancient graveyard as everything around
her dissolves and the pixie residents flee in dismay. Evoking the image of a
broken reel at the movies, the viewer is confronted with the harsh glare of
a flat, blank white screen. Further illustrating the immaculate flatness of
her landscapes, Aoshima often exaggerates certain forms to produce a unity of
patterning that borders on abstraction. This disorientating breakdown of pictorial
space imbues the plane with a tension that seems to thrum with the innate rhythm
of proton versus electron. With the addition of airborne apparitions and forms
that float without any regard to the horizon – inexplicable plumes of
silver-tinted mauve smoke and shards of incandescent crystal in place of a moon
– Aoshima’s fantasy escapes transcend oppressive earthly conventions
such as perspective and gravity, creating an atmosphere of utter artificiality
that borders on the sublime.
Zoey Mondt