GALLERY KOGURE NEW YORK is pleased to announce solo exhibition of Yasuhiro Onishi “PORTRAIT”. 

Portraits series by Yasuhiro Onishi is endless series of portraits that are strangely deformed and painted in minimalistic frames, and the grotesque portraits looming out of the dark background painted mainly in black remind us of classical European paintings and at a glance, they look serious, but each of them has such humorous personality. None of these portraits has information of the model or reference, and they were created as Onishi worked alone in silence in his studio separated from the rest of the society, and they are based upon his own reality that was confined in a small window. 

None of his portraits that cannot be even clearly identified as persons looks complete. A person who is missing something, or one who is warped; they all have weak-looking shoulders and they look timid and not beautiful at all, but somehow, they fascinate us and make us fond of them with their strange allures. Perhaps, they are like the original images of our childhood when we were not living in reality, and the many numbers of carefully painted portraits in small frames would make the viewers look for themselves among them. It depends on viewers whether they think Onishi’s portraits are grotesque or funny, but there is no doubt that Onishi’s portraits have the power to grab the viewers and pull them into their minimalistic paintings.