Shinji Ohmaki creates breathtaking, large-scale installations that audiences lose themselves in. These works are more than just ‘Insta-genic’ spectacles; with them, the artist disrupts our bodily and psychological senses in order to get us asking some big questions: What has led society to the issues it now faces, and what are our reasons for continuing to exist?
As you visit the National Art Center, Tokyo’s largest exhibition hall, you become a participant in worlds conjured by three immersive installations that make dramatic use of the vast space. Through the extremes of enveloping darkness and intensely illuminating light, augmented by video, sound and poetry, Ohmaki creates a sense of integration with nature that is increasingly being lost in modern lifestyles.
Reflected in these works are the artist’s thoughts on civilisation and nature, as well as life and death, over the period spanning the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Text by Darren Gore