Sky, 2005. Courtesy Blum and Poe, Los Angeles / Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris and Miami. © 2005 Chiho Aoshima/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
The first UK solo exhibition of work by Tokyo-based artist Chiho Aoshima is on show now at Baltic in Gateshead, running until January 28 2007.
Fantastical skyscrapers with faces surveying urban jungles, colourful tangles of zombies and fairies and idyllic rainbows fill the worlds presented by Chiho. Stylistically the subjects are manga-like, following the Japanese superflat movement – symbolically reflecting two-dimensionality in contemporary Japanese pop culture.
Gushing Zombies, 2005. Courtesy Blum and Poe, Los Angeles / Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris and Miami. © 2005 Chiho Aoshima/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved
The ‘flatness’ doesn’t mean her prints have no deeper foundations, though. Themes taken on by Chiho often indicate her concerns about global patterns of abnormal weather, or natural disasters. The work Magma Spirit Expodes. Tsunami is Dreadful (2004), depicts a gigantic, candy coloured wave of magma with a girl’s face bringing destruction, with the wave facing a fire-spitting mirror reflection of itself.
Another unusual and slightly futuristic subject employed by Chiho is a journey through an imaginary world from the perspective of a worm.
Some pieces, on the other hand, look back to traditional Japanese scroll painting, with flat manga-style characters superimposed on backgrounds that imitate the serene paintings of natural subjects made in Japan for over a thousand years (for example, Children of Lotus, 2005).
City Glow, 2005. Courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles / Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris & Miami. © 2005 Chiho Aoshima/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd
Chiho creates her artworks digitally, using Illustrator software and printing in a variety of forms including large-scale murals, which have in the past been installed over entire rooms. The apocalyptic Magma Spirit Explodes is a chromogenic reproduction of her largest wallpaper piece to date.
City Glow (2005) is a seven-minute-long animated work, played across five flat panel screens. The trip takes viewers through the transformation of nature, seasons and life in a magical landscape.
If you’re a bit further south than Gateshead, you can also see one of Chiho’s works at Gloucester Road tube station, where City Glow, Mountain Whisper takes the place of advertising hoardings behind the train line.
