Kenjiro Okazaki

TOPICA PICTUS is a suite of abstract paintings, each paired with a short essay

and reference image(s), which function as key components to provide multi-layered

experiences to audiences.

In this ongoing series that now comprises over 150 works since the start of the

COVID-19 pandemic, the works were made in response to the unprecedented condition

of isolated co-existence, the suspension of time and space, and the perceived loss of

tactile or concrete experience, which has significantly impacted our social reality. For

the artist, this condition has provided the “possibility of going everywhere because

we cannot go anywhere,” an opportunity to go on a solitary journey. In the process of

making these paintings, Okazaki finds that the multitude of issues that historically face

painting is akin to the discovery of a place. Namely, each painting confronts a unique

issue and allows for a unique topos (place) to emerge. The term topica in TOPICA

PICTUS is derived from Aristotle’s Ars Topica (The Topics) on the art of the dialectic,

and is associated with topos, which indicates a place. In the course of his work,

Okazaki recalled not only art historical objects such as African masks, decorative

and colored manuscripts, Kamakura-era picture scrolls, Momoyama-era Japanese

paintings, Renaissance, Impressionist, and Modernist art, but also medieval maps,

images of Dumbo, Pearl Harbor, and Google Earth.

Kenjiro Okazaki: FIAC 2021