Artist Statement
I consider myself a digital loiterer. I see digital content as the modern readymade - an image of Duchamp’s urinal instead of the urinal. Like physical environments, I loiter in digital spaces like a man sifting through a digital wastelands. I throw seemingly disparate images in my shopping cart and move on. Images I collect or photography on my iPhone are informed by memory, my mixed-race identity and environments whether geographic or digital. I am often drawn to liminal spaces, the fracture in society, the hyper-vigilant space between my Asian and white selves. My work is an attempt at reconciliation. There is a spontaneity and speed to my process, perhaps performative in nature, that facilitates serendipity and meaning in the moment of conception.
Artist Bio
Akira Ohiso is a Seattle-based artist who has been working with digital applications since 2014. He works mostly on an iPad using Procreate and his index finger. Before he moved to digital , he was primarily exploring collage and assemblage processes . Akira plays with the relationship between digital and analog and enjoys using mass-produced services such as Fed Ex to print his art and IKEA to frame it. Utilizing “low brow” materials and processes hints at his comfort with pop and outsider art iconography. As a child, he studied painting with Aida Wheden, a regional artist who was taught by Thomas Hart Benton and Hans Hoffman. Akira received his BA in Studio art in 2001 where he received creative guidance from Lilliana Porter, Maureen Connor and Debra Priestley. He lives in Seattle with his wife and three children.
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