Ageru!, 2024
Biography
Born in Japan, Asuka Ogawa spent part of her childhood and teenage years in Brazil, completed her studies in Sweden and graduated from Central Saint Martins in London. The cultural diversity that permeated her formative years had a strong impact on her artistic production, which incorporates different visual references, beliefs and traditions.
Her dreamlike paintings, with monochrome and vibrant backgrounds, feature frontal representations of androgynous, doll-like children, constructed with great formal economy, with carefully constructed faces and almond-shaped eyes that seem to look beyond the painting. The construction scheme of these pictorial compositions, which due to their formal economy and chromatic intensity carry a certain aura of mystery, ends up bringing them closer to images of a spiritual nature. There is a strong reference in her poetics to her own ancestry, which combines Japanese and Afro-Brazilian elements. In the artist's words: "Although I don't have a theme when I paint, I'm always thinking of my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, and of the beauty, strength, struggle and love of our ancestors."
This ancestral legacy is visible in the other elements that make up Asuka's paintings, such as clothing, props, objects and animals. The situations in which these characters are inserted are quite enigmatic and even banal, everyday scenes such as a wash or a game between children, in Asuka's paintings take on metaphysical contours, loaded with symbolism that connects the artist to her various roots.
Asuka has participated in solo exhibitions such as Melinha, at Nara Roesler (2024), in São Paulo, Brazil; Pedra, at Blum & Poe (2023), in Los Angeles, USA; Tamago, at Blum & Poe (2022) in Los Angeles, USA; Feijão, at Half Gallery (2019), in New York, USA; Soup, at Henry Taylor’s (2017), in Los Angeles, USA. She also participated in group exhibitions, such as Japan in/out Brazil, at Nara Roesler (2024), in New York, USA; Room by room: concepts, themes and artists in The Rachosfy Collection, at The Warehouse (2023), in Dallas, USA; 5471 Miles, at Blum & Poe (2020) in Los Angeles, USA; Don’t Eat Me, at Deli Gallery (2018), in New York, USA; Early 21st Century Art, at Almine Rech Gallery (2018), in London, UK. His work is included in the collections of institutions and museums such as Dallas Museum of Art, in Dallas, USA; Nasher Museum of Art from Duke University, in Durham, USA and X Museum, in Beijing, China.
