Art Department

Back to Contents of Issue: September 2001

Maybe it takes an artist as established in the traditional media as Shinro Ohtake to make the digital seem so painterly. While many of his new works (printed by Epson and exhibited at its Epsite gallery and at the art bookshop Nadiff) have that computer-manipulated or created feel, others -- despite being digitally made -- come with all the force of experience and maintain a painterly quality, like the one at left (simply called No. 10). Still others have been actually worked (through collage, for example) into something beyond the simply digital.

In this, Ohtake's first foray into digital art, he found more obstacles (in terms of equipment and operation) than when creating with traditional tools. (Yes, waiting for art files to "save" is even more tedious than watching paint dry.)

Yet, even in the "flat" medium of a computer, it is possible to see the physical effort (dynamic application of paint, multiple layers of collage) of his previous work. You could swear he's dragged paint across canvas -- it was printed at 131 x 103 cm -- in the image here.

-- Andrew Pothecary

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