galerie laurent mueller

Pulp

The galerie laurent mueller presents the first solo exhibition in France by the Japanese artist Motoko Dobashi.

In her work, Motoko Dobashi combines pictorial elements drawn from traditional japanese prints as well as european old masters’ paintings. At the same time, she references the shapes and contents from the cartoon and street art worlds. In the scenes that she constructs and which are often axed around architecture, she plays with the effects of perspective whilst using a hued palette of blues and greys which accentuate the mystical aspect of her work.

For the gallery show, Dobashi devised an installation where an origami inspired ornament, mechanically reproduced and directly pasted to the walls, interacts with a acrylic wall drawing in order to create an illusion of space. This background serves as context to her precise acrylic drawings on paper.

A starting point for this installation is the notion of fragility as opposed to the monumentality of the worlds the artist creates. Organic structures provide a sense of perennity and are combined with architectural as well as geometrical motives which are equally evocative of stability and strength. To this are added other forms inspired by nature, frail possible constructions out of a dream, delicate and arcadian. This fragility gains another perspective in the light of the recent events in the artist’s home country.