2024

01.02 — 04.02 Kenichi Ogawa Art Rotterdam 2024, Hot Spring, silicone & ceramics

“In the process of evolution we transform and change.
I feel this change through painting and the desire to visualize this.”

Kenichi Ogawa’s (1969, Aichi, Japan). His current paintings and ceramic pieces all revolve around the theme of ‘Hot Spring’. Animals transform into humans and humans transform into animals.
Look how human beings turn into peaceful heads above the steaming water, how they become smaller and simpler.
Ogawa’s work wants to be light, to remind us that we have bodies, that we also do small things, and how important these are in a spinning world. Contemporary Japan has a strong culture of ‘happy characters’, cheerful carriers of emotions and meaning.

Kenichi Ogawa was born in 1969 and lives in Aichi Prefecture. Graduated from Aichi Prefectural College of Art. He has been a long-time artist at Kenji Taki gallery (Tokyo/ Nogoya, Japan). He had several exhibitons like: 2023, Kenji Taki Gallery (Tokyo), 2021, City Hekinan Museum (JP), 2019, “Weightless” with Peter McDonald, Mieke van Schaijk 2018, “I Say Yesterday, You Hear Tomorrow. Visions From Japan” Gallerie delle prigioni, Treviso (IT) 2017,

“Art Obulist” Okura Park, Obu-city, Aici (JP) Seoul City Museum (Korea). 2013 Art Zuid, International sculpture Route Amsterdam. Public Collection Voorlinden Museum, Wassenaar (NL) Sofacq Gallery Merelbeke. Kenichi Ogawa is represented by Mieke van Schaijk gallery since 2016.

Galerie Mieke van Schaijk is proud to show these intimate works by an artist whose recognition has yet to reach the shores of Europe.

For the past several years, Kenichi Ogawa has produced “silicone paintings” drawn with a simple line to scratch the canvas covered with silicon and ceramic objects. In pursuit of the relationship between the support and the motifs drawn, and the tactile sensation.

In silicon painting, paint is applied to the canvas, then silicon is applied thickly, and the lines are drawn at once with a brush. The image is generated at once, as a child draws on the snow piled up or draws a line on the frosted glass. The image of the child born is healed, such as a child sleeping, a mother trying to lie down, a parent sleeping or a parent and child in a hot spring (although this may not always be the case)