Tomohisa Obana: To see the rainbow at night, I must make it myself

About

The sculpture exhibition, which incorporates installation and performance, marks the ceramics-based artist’s first solo show outside of his native Japan, where he lives and works in the rural town of Iga in Mie Prefecture. Obana’s prior solo exhibitions have been held around the Osaka region.

In a diverse and ongoing series, Tomohisa Obana titles completed artworks Good Day to acknowledge a satisfactory relationship to his own production.  It could be said that Obana approaches the material of clay as his sentient collaborator, producing artworks which connect processes of ceramic production to his or our will to express and work through our emotional lives.

It is helpful to know that, until the age of 15, Obana was raised in a Christianity structured foster care system in Kyoto. In the innocence of his youth, he had no concept of sin until such dark ideas were suggested through the Christian disciplines which circumstances required him to abide.  At the same time, he felt drawn to the things of nature—such as soil, trees, forests, and cliffs.  In one epiphanous experience, around the age of 10, a giant wind swept over the artist, convincing him that nature is greater than all, far more powerful than himself, any person, or culture and its ways. Though Obana had no childhood exposure to Japan’s indigenous religion of Shinto, his adult concerns have brought him and his work into close alignment with some of Shinto’s basic concepts, respect for nature’s living forces being paramount. Recognizing himself as a miniscule part of nature’s grand scheme, he has set out with curiosity, love, and respect to lead a life handling soil and wood. Obana worked for eight years in a clay shop in Nara, learned about the endless spectrum of clay and mineral compositions and, at the same time, mastered the art of wood firing.