Yasutomo Oka
I visited a solo exhibition by Yasutomo Oka, an artist known for his bijinga (portraits of beautiful women). The venue is “SITE Aoyama,” about a five-minute walk from Aoyama 1-chome.
I stopped by on the evening of the opening day. Several visitors had already arrived ahead of me. Oka himself was on hand at the gallery, telling me he had been “standing for five hours straight.” The show was clearly thriving from day one.
He mentioned that this is his fifth solo show in ten years. Since a single oil painting takes about a month to finish, one could sense that—amid the current boom in photorealistic painting—the work is extremely labor-intensive and producing a large body of work is difficult.
The works on display are sold by lottery. You fill out an entry sheet, and after the exhibition closes a drawing is held. Some pieces already had more than twenty applicants (over 20-to-1 odds), offering a glimpse of just how popular they are. Under a first-come-first-served system, people apparently used to line up from early morning… Formidable!
One might think, “If the odds are that high, why not just raise the price?” But Oka, wearing a gentle expression throughout, stayed composed and unhurried. Even so, he said that once the exhibition ends he is considering raising his current rate of “40,000 yen per go (canvas-size unit)” by about 5,000 yen.
His drawings, too, reveal remarkably meticulous craftsmanship, yet the artist commented that “unlike oils, they’re easy.” Oil paintings, he explained, are brought toward completion through repeated repainting.
His fan base seems broad as well.
Leaning in and staring intently, even each individual strand of hair is rendered in such fine detail that it draws a sigh of admiration.
I entered the lottery myself. The odds are so steep that taking a piece home looks quite unlikely, but I was glad simply to have viewed the works at leisure during the show’s short run.
Oka has a gentle air about him and answered my questions with sincerity. Photography inside the venue was permitted, but photos of the artist himself were, sadly, off-limits…
They were wonderful works.
Lottery Odds
Later, the total number of applications for each work was announced via Twitter.
Astonishingly, the highest odds came in at a staggering “67-to-1!”
Congratulations to everyone who won a piece!
Among younger photorealist painters, works like Kenta Nakajima’s female portraits belong to a genre that has drawn much attention and popularity of late, but Yasutomo Oka’s female portraits carry a realism so vivid you can almost hear the sitter breathe. I would love to add one to my collection someday, though its popularity looks set only to accelerate.
