Shun Okada "under/stand"

Venue: Gallery Commune

We are pleased to present "under/stand," an exhibition by Tokyo-based artist Shun Okada. This will be his second exhibition at our gallery, following "Sandstorm" in November 2020, which consisted of a series of noise works. This will finally showcase his bug works, which are his main theme.

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When I first saw the glitched video on the Famicom, it looked like a finished painting to me. I wondered what would happen if I copied it directly onto a canvas. I copied it out of curiosity, but it turned out to be just a mundane and monotonous painting.
When I placed a lump of white paint on the canvas to cover up the failed piece, the overall impression of the canvas changed slightly. This change was not something I intended, and I don't know if it was good or bad. However, I intuitively decided that the piece was complete.

Why did a work come into being, and why did I decide it was complete? As I continued to create while repeatedly asking myself these questions, I came up with various creative works. I turned the picture upside down, stirred the damp paint, and joined two unrelated pictures together to make a single painting. There was also a work that was completed at the time the earthquake occurred while I was in the middle of creating it.
What all of his works have in common is that once the image is transferred onto the canvas, it transforms into something unexpected, like the moment a bug occurs.

The work I create in this way is still something I don't understand, reflecting the inevitable phenomena that lie beyond my own intentional actions. After that, I look at the finished painting over and over again. I hang it on the wall and continue to look at it for long periods of time in my daily life. And when I understand the work, I decide it is complete.
Even as I write this, the picture is in my field of vision, and I continue to face it in the back of my mind.

- Shun Okada

He projects glitched images from a Nintendo Famicom onto a canvas and then traces the images with a paintbrush. It's easy to describe his technique, but his works, which are completed after an enormous production period and many twists and turns, are imbued with a strength and mysterious sense of elation that cannot be expressed in clichéd words. His works contain a variety of information (emotions), such as a desire to explore the incomprehensible, and the confusion and conflict that arise when one pushes forward. Come and see this human challenge to uncertain creation, something that machines could never achieve.

Shun Okada |
Born in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1992. Artist currently living in Tokyo.
@oka_un | shunshon.tumblr.com