The Distance Between Earth's Sound and Color

aaploit presents The Distance Between Earth's Sound and Color, a solo exhibition by Okada Keisuke, on view from January 13 through January 28, 2024. Okada studied oil painting at Tokyo University of the Arts and is currently enrolled in the university's graduate program.

Okada collects stones he is drawn to in forests, mountains, and along roadsides, then grinds them into pigments. Sometimes he finds what looks like transparent glass mixed in. He imagines that the stone might contain dinosaur bones or shell fossils, and paints while considering that the pigments he uses may once have been part of ancient living things.

Walking through mountains in search of materials, visiting the waste yard of the university's sculpture department, and researching the geological ages of the places where he collects stones, he has discovered that various creatures once inhabited those sites. He consults museum curators to research what kinds of organisms they were and what properties the minerals possess. Some of the stones he has gathered contain material that could become gemstones, though he was told the quantities are too small to hold any value.

Evolution and Extinction is a work connecting two size-120 canvases (1,940 × 1,303 mm each). It depicts organisms that would have lived during the geological ages of the collected stones. A fish-like creature painted across the full horizontal plane draws the eye, but many other organisms populate the surface. The fins of the large fish emit a pearl-like luster, and an opal-like gradation rises from within. Looking across the entire surface, the minerals embedded here and there seem to begin speaking. When facing the work, one's thoughts extend not only to the depicted motifs but, through the texture of the rock—matter that became stone over vast spans of time—to the deep reaches of the ancient past.

On his work for this exhibition, Okada says:

The sound I conceive of is the vibration of the earth's magnetic field. I feel that this vibration becomes color and form, and that the same vibration can never be encountered twice. I made these works by translating what I felt into painting.

For inquiries regarding the exhibition and works, please contact info@aaploit.com.