PASADENA — “Oscar Oiwa: Dreams of a Sleeping World” is on view at the USC Pacific Asia Museum, 46 N. Los Robles Ave. in Pasadena, through April 26.
The immersive art of Oscar Oiwa asks visitors a poignant question indicative of this historical moment: What do we do when we are paralyzed by the chaos of our times? Oiwa is concerned that when the noise of our everyday world impedes our radiant minds, we shut down.
In this gravitational pull of “sleep” we look to our dreams to reset, searching our subconscious for nourishment and hoping for wisdom to better face the dysfunction of our world. To that end, Oiwa invites visitors to enter his 360° dreamscape to transform the clenched fist of our hearts into open hands.
This exhibition features an installation of a new immersive space, created specifically for USC PAM, and large-scale artworks for which Oiwa is renowned.
Immersive Dreamscape Dome and exhibited artworks: The public is invited to enter into and become part of this new Oiwa dreamscape. Installed at the USC PAM, the inflatable artwork requires two weeks of work and 120 sharpie markers, as Oiwa draws alongside his artisan assistant and four MFA students from USC. Complementing this immersive experience is a dynamic installation of Oiwa’s large-scale paintings shedding light on his surrealist and imaginative dreamscapes.
Oiwa is a Japanese artist born in 1965 in São Paulo, Brazil. Now an American citizen, he lives and works in New York City. He graduated from the School of Architecture and Urbanism in São Paulo in 1989 and was influenced by comics and illustration from an early age. He is known for his giant canvases and large frescoes.
Oiwa has exhibited internationally and his work is included in noted private and public collections. Important solo exhibitions since 1990 include the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Mori Museum of Art, Tokyo; Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro; Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe; and House of Culture of Japan, Paris.
His work has been included in group exhibitions at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Busan Museum of Art, Busan, South Korea; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima; Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Art, Hyogo; Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles; Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Museum of Modern Art, Gunma; Mystetskyi Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum Complex, Kiev, Ukraine; Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix; Shoto Museum of Art, Tokyo; Takamatsu Art Museum, Takamatsu; Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, Mass.; and WhiteBox, New York, N.Y.
Oiwa received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1997 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2001.
Visit his website at www.oscaroiwastudio.com.
Museum hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.
Admission: $10 general; $7 for students with valid ID and seniors (65+); free for children 17 and under, museum members, USC faculty, staff and students with current ID, and all visitors on Thursdays from 5 to 8 p.m. and the second Sunday of the month.
For more information, call (626) 787-2680, email info@pam.usc.edu or visit https://pacificasiamuseum.usc.edu/.