Kyoto Meetings

The painter, Daisuke Ohba, traverses and connects various conditions that constitute painting on the picture plane, presenting the phenomena that emerge alongside them and considering this process as the central axis of his pictorial practice. Through his recent Hologram paintings, made using a handmade squeegee that incises grooves into the pigment, generating spectral effects of light, he has embarked on a new series of oil paintings for the first time in twenty years. Rooted in the series from 2015 and the series from 2009, the latter made by drawing spirals with a liner brush, the new oil paintings are grounded in a corporeality that has long been recurrent in his practice, emerging through the repeated act of forming fine grooves in the oil paint. Covered with bodily traces such as brush pressure, the tremor of the hand, and speed, the works give rise to a circle of light that flows and changes with the angles of the grooves and the viewer’s position. The exhibition includes works that employ optical laws, including a golden (2025), and (2023–2025). The latter, using crystal-like forms made from paint and pigments and guided by Ohba’s perception, experience and physical judgment, bears the artist’s own name. “Painting is a site where events unfold and the world is explored.” – Daisuke Ohba, who has continuously questioned the relationship between humans and the world, now seeks to further develop his practice, renewing his persistent inquiry.