MOTOHIKO ODANI

Sunday 13 February 2011

MOTOHIKO ODANI

Motohiko Odani has an interesting collection of work though I find the titles of his creations tend to fall short.

"Motohiko Odani has been celebrated for his meticulously crafted objects and visions of utopia and dystopia since the late 1990s. A main theme underlying his sculpture, photography, and video work is mutation of humans and animals. In his celluloid-colored video Rompers, a computer-graphic-enhanced mutant girl sings, idyllically, while eerie insects crawl around her. She is indifferent to them and seems to accept that she is becoming something other than herself. The work comments on the mutation of nature in an age of bioengineering while appropriating the innocent setting of the children’s TV program, Romper Room that originally aired in the United States in the 1950s. On the Japanese version that was shown during the late 1960s and the 1970s, toy bees and cute animals frolicked with children.

Motohiko Odani was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1972 and received an MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1997. In his sculpture, photography, and video works, Odani mingles human, animal, and futuristic anatomy, exploring the boundaries of reality and myth, and the physical and the spiritual. Odani’s creations are eerie, yet visually stunning. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Intermedia Art at Tokyo University of the Arts. Odani’s works have been shown in various solo exhibitions, including “SP4 ‘The Spectator’ in Modern Sculpture,” Yamamoto Gendai Gallery, Tokyo (2009); and “En Melody,” Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milano (2001); as well as group exhibitions that include “MI VIDA: From Heaven to Hell,” MUeCSARNOK, Budapest (2009), and “Skin of/in Contemporary Art,” The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2007)."