KANA KAWANISHI ART OFFICE is pleased to announce opening of Hiroshi Ono’s solo exhibition, Japan, Today, on Sunday, December 17th.

 

 

Hiroshi Ono was born in 1971 in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, and currently lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, since 2002. Ono completed his B.A. at Tama Art University, Faculty of Art and Design, Department of Sculpture and M.F.A at Sandberg Instituut, Fine Art department. Visiting 50 countries in the world, he created Line on the Earth after receiving Konica Photography Encouraged Prize in 1999. In his first publication Line on the Earth (Edición Iman, 2007), Ono discreetly connected divided grounds of dystopias he confronted in his real-life as one road.

 

 

His second publication The small feasts make the world (Mochuisle, 2012 ) introduces landscapes in the Netherlands and Japan on the equal vision of hope, consisting of essays of his frustrating everyday life in the oppressed Tokyo, and diaries of his peaceful days in Amsterdam where people from varied nations and backgrounds are naturally accepted as is. His unique and humorous point of view allowed not only the cultural differences between the Netherlands and Japan to appear but also the essential cores that human share, regardless of one's cultural sphere.

 

 

In his third and latest publication, Japan, Today, Ono focuses on Japan.

 

 

As seen in Ono’s comment stating “Showa was rough but full of happiness; Heisei became beautifully organized but oppressed; and the post-disaster era had been as though we hit an endless end,” he adequately and appropriately depicts the true scenes of Japan in which to us living inside the nation feels as one vague flowing story.

 

 

Trace of the Pacific War. Sites of tragedies that shook the society. Current states of places where affairs took place as a turning point. Afflicted areas of the tragic Great East Japan Earthquake—and, ordinary scenes of everyday life. Ono presents all such landscapes in parallel, allowing viewers to discover the true state of Japan, and what happiness is for the country, from his unique perspective as a Japanese living in the Netherlands.

 

 

We hope this exhibition will be an opportunity for all viewers to acquire inspirations as their own related story.