Artist statement:

There are voids and blank spaces that we are unconscious of in everyday life. Onishi reconstructs these “spaces” and “boundaries by using various materials. Inside and outside, front and back, and the boundaries between are made visible in his works questioning the relationships between various things like humankind and nature.

In ART OSAKA 2022 Expanded, Onishi borrows the form of stones, which symbolizes the accumulation of time, and attempts to trace an entire riverbed. Stones, magmatic solidifications born from the earth’s core, are shaped by the accumulation of sediment and the currents of the rivers; they travel across the earth’s surface and expand horizontally into riverbeds. These stones found in the riverbed have been molded with copper foil revealing their inner and outer shapes, giving form to the volume and time of the stones that will and have been reduced. It can be said that these stones have been reconstructed and returned to their larger forms. The audience can view the work from either perspective and confront the existentially questionable boundaries between inside and outside, interior and exterior.