The Possibility of Existence By Shigeru Onishi

Reintroducing the Forgotten Masterpieces

The Possibility of Existence

Foam, Amsterdam

September 17, 2021 – January 9, 2022

The Flicker Phase, 1950s © Estate of Shigeru Onishi, care of Tomoharu Onishi, courtesy of MEM, Tokyo.⁠

By Nona Chen

Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam pays homage to the career of a forgotten artist in this monumental first solo exhibition of Shigeru Onishi’s photographic works in Europe. Surreal and captivating, Onishi’s compositions selected for The Possibility of Existence elicit questions concerning life, memory, and reality. The inaugural exhibition curated by Mirjam Kooiman features fifty photographs and one painting by the artist, presenting a body of work in line with Onishi’s style of “transcend[ing] time and space.”[1] The curation appropriately conceptualizes a nonlinear progression by arranging the photographs sans chronology (with the exception of a painting in the concluding position) with no singular theme dominating a room. The result: a stunning compilation of Onishi’s most quintessential artworks.

Title unknown, 1950s © Estate of Shigeru Onishi, care of Tomoharu Onishi, courtesy of MEM, Tokyo.⁠

Born in 1928 in Takahashi, Japan, Shigeru Onishi studied topology before pursuing a career in art. His background in mathematics persists in his photographs; by layering together a montage of fragmented scenes into one image, he constructs a picture that appears to collapse time and space. This technique is consistent throughout his photographic oeuvre featuring bodies, domestic scenes, nature, inanimate objects, and indistinguishable shapes combined to create images that speak to a sense of intimacy and uncertainty. Vincente Todolí comments on the subject: “Onishi’s photography has a performance element; it is presented as an act. He brings freedom to the photographic process,” explains the artistic director and curator of the exhibition at Bombas Gens, whose collaboration is allowing the collection to be exhibited at Foam.[2] After 1957, Onishi renounced photography and transitioned to creating abstract ink paintings in a style described by art critic and curator Michel Tapié as informal art: art that “focused solely on the act of painting itself”[3] of which form is merely a side effect. Onishi worked exclusively in this medium until his death in 1994.

Onishi’s role appears to be one of reconciling contradictory motifs, blurring the lines between photography and painting, reality and imagination, organic and inorganic, and thus, existence and oblivion.

The exhibition at Foam opens in a gallery of black and white walls that reflect the contrasting values of Onishi’s work. The photographs throughout demonstrate a profound skill for manipulating images into dreamlike compositions using multiple exposures, fragmented components, and unconventional developing techniques, establishing Onishi as a pioneer of Japanese photography of his time. His method of using a brush to apply the emulsion during the development process creates distinct strokes that cut boldly across a photograph and contribute to the abstract nature of his compositions. Though the selection of objects is exclusive to Onishi’s achromatic works, the pieces—some in high contrast and others blended into a murky greyscale—are anything but homogeneous. One photograph overlays several exposures of a smiling face averted from the lens, a wrinkled hand splayed over a checker-patterned fabric, and swirling streaks of emulsion; another overlaps silhouettes of barren trees and irregular rings of brightness across a dark grey haze. Dark juxtaposed with light, anonymous figures, and blurry, indefinite forms suggest the presence of meaning in the face of obscurity while underscoring photography’s purpose in capturing the transitive moments of life. Onishi’s role appears to be one of reconciling contradictory motifs, blurring the lines between photography and painting, reality and imagination, organic and inorganic, and thus, existence and oblivion.

Title unknown, 1950s © Estate of Shigeru Onishi, care of Tomoharu Onishi, courtesy of MEM, Tokyo.⁠

Foam’s curation effectively balances contrasting artworks to create a visually varied yet congruent experience. Only one isolated section of the gallery presents some pieces unilaterally in a rather condensed row along one wall. Although economical, this secluded area sacrifices the individuality of the photographs and allows little room for contemplation. Despite the shortcomings of the space, the unifying element was the decision to arrange two photographs of the same subject—the broad leaves of a flowering plant—directly mirroring each other at either end of the hallway to provide an intentional symmetry that ties the room together.

The final room of the gallery displays independently on one wall a colossal untitled painting by Onishi that surpasses in size the rest of the photographs. A work of towering, deliberate black brushstrokes and inky grey spatters vividly contrasting a white surface, the painting is evidently the outstanding feature of the exhibition. Onishi’s own hand is unmistakable—the brushwork of the painting mirrors the same strokes used for the unique developing process of his earlier photographs. The painting, in line with the motifs of Onishi’s body of work, presents both a reflection of the artist’s enduring stylistic consistency and a marked deviation from his long-standing career in the medium of photography.

Title unknown, 1950s © Estate of Shigeru Onishi, care of Tomoharu Onishi, courtesy of MEM, Tokyo.⁠

Considering Foam primarily shows photographic works, the unorthodox decision to exhibit a painting is bold but essential when taking into account the significance of Onishi’s experimentation in both mediums. With only one monumental painting among fifty photographs, there is a clear attempt to emphasize the role of painting without monopolizing the primary directive of a photography exhibition (and museum). Some might consider the notion of having a painting, and such a large one at that, as the culminating act of the exhibition—and therefore insinuating its unique prominence with respect to the photographic works—to be antithetical to the mission of the museum whose tagline, after all, is “We are all about photography.” Yet, how else to captivate audiences with a debut exhibition showcasing the revolutionary career of an artist deprived of the recognition he undeniably deserves? A memorable occasion necessitates a departure from tradition.

            Foam has masterfully compiled Onishi’s artworks into a narrative as captivating as the artist’s photographs themselves, with the themes composed by Kooiman profoundly and authentically reflecting the artist’s objectives in context of his career. The Possibility of Existence is not an occasion solely to appreciate Shigeru Onishi so much as it is a celebration of artists not yet realized in the canon of contemporary art. Such an ambitious revival of an extraordinary artistic career propels 20th century Japanese photography to the forefront of contemporary art discourse. The decisions made towards this delicate task of balancing the inclusion of the most crucial elements of the artist’s career, the devotion to a novel exhibition, and a faithfulness to the goals of the museum are commendable.

[1]“Shigeru Onishi – the Possibility of Existence: Now at Foam.” Foam. 2021. Accessed October 14, 2021. https://www.foam.org/museum/programme/shigeru-onishi-the-possibility-of-existence.

[2]Gloria Crespo MacLennan. “Shigeru Onishi, photography as a gesture.” The Limited Times. September 24, 2021. Accessed October 14, 2021. https://newsrnd.com/news/2021-09-23-shigeru-onishi–photography-as-a-gesture.Hy4fItd9QK.html

[3] Edizioni Galleria D’Arte Cortina, Milan, April 1969. Retrieved from museum label October 11, 2021.

Towards a Speculative Future: In Conversation with Maari Sugawara

Still from Dreams Come True Very Much (animation), 2021. Image Courtesy of the Artist.

By Nawang Tsomo

Maari Sugawara is a multi-disciplinary lens-based artist whose intersectional approach and combination of research and art-making explores personal and collective memories of what constitutes Japanese-ness. She recently graduated from OCAD University’s Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design (IMAD) graduate program as “Promising New Artist” for her thesis exhibition Dreams Come True Very Much. In this work, she questions the state of the Japanese identity and how the so-called advancement of technology in Japan harms its citizens. Politicizing the personal, Sugawara pushes the boundaries of media and image-making through speculation, challenging the Eurocentric and patriarchal standards set by the Japanese nation. Now back in Tokyo, Sugawara and I have this conversation, via frequent emails, amidst the controversial Tokyo Olympics.

NT: Maari, can you discuss your background and what brought you to art-making?

MS: Growing up as a racialized, queer, Autistic, Japanese woman in England from the age of ten, issues of marginalized identities became central to my research. I have been particularly interested in what John Caughie calls the “subordinate’s double identification”[1] with see-er and seen; the pervasiveness of exploitation in capitalist and colonialist societies. This led me to become engaged with the intersection of Japanese studies, decolonial studies, gender studies, hauntology, and speculative fiction narratives in my digital medium-based art.

The intention of my ongoing project, Dreams Come True Very Much, is to point toward alternative Japanese future(s) by critically examining the sociogenic codes, which refers to how socio-political relations become materialized to form identities, towards reconstituting the category of “Japanese”. It undermines the sacrosanct position of “Japaneseness” which has been nourished by Orientalized discourses on Japanese culture and nationhood. It also centers on a critique of Japanese data-driven future(s) as being haunted by its colonial past. I illustrate how the traditional categories that are used to constitute identities are categorically interpellated and performatively constituted through discourse and suggest a departure from compartmentalizing identities.

NT: You recently completed your graduate thesis exhibition Dreams Come True Very Much. In this exhibition, consisting of several video installations, you use speculative fiction to imagine Japan in a post-Moonshot world where Japan no longer exists. Can you tell us about this narrative that you’ve created, specifically in the context of the Moonshot Research and Development program initiated by the Cabinet Office of Japan? 

MS: My works are set in the minds of the Avatar-Ms—cybernetic avatars of myself, and my narratives follow a theme of yearning and longing for “Japan(s).” The story takes place in a post-“Moonshot” future, where Japan has vanished after an unspecified man-made catastrophe; no one has seen Japan ever since. The Japanese are scattered around the world. Before Japan vanished, the government established the “Moonshot” program to create “Society 5.0,” a notion of a society that integrates cyberspace and physical space to realize economic growth. Each Japanese was suggested by the government to have ten avatars, and most Japanese multiplied themselves to “improve productivity” and become “more resistant to stress.”[2] The government uploaded individuals’ cognitive information, from birth to the point of bodily death, to machines. Such machines are programmed to think that they are the individuals. Although the program is no longer supported, the avatars live on in the virtual world—including Avatar-Ms, the ten copies of myself. In the virtual world, her cybernetic avatars dream of “Japan(s).”

The colonization of life (removing death from life), is perhaps, the ultimate form of violence.

NT: What does it mean that the avatar-Ms continue to live on virtually?

MS: The Japanese state-owned identities, forced to live forever post-“Moonshot,” are also colonized identities shaped by the Euro-American gaze and maleness. Essentially, the government is attempting to multiply Japanese national identity: with a life’s worth of data from every citizen, the Japanese state can practically eliminate the death of the Japanese people, as information lives forever—identity is information with self-awareness. The government can upload the individual’s data up to the point of their physical death to a machine that thinks it is the individual; thus, Japanese national identity lives on; it can be kept fully intact—in the sense that identities that are saved as “Japanese” data will therefore always be “Japanese”—solving the issue of the nation’s population decline without taking immigrants. In this scenario, a Japanese person, or at least a Japanese person’s identity, can work forever for the nation. The sets of data (people’s identities) will be used by the State to perform tasks. Japan is a self-proclaimed homogenous nation; this program would solidify that claim even further. The colonization of life (removing death from life), is perhaps, the ultimate form of violence.

Installation shot of When I use English: There is a Hole, Waiting to Eat Me, It’s Mouth Wide Open. Like a Vagina, 2021. Photo Courtesy of Artist.

NT: One of the most striking videos in the exhibit is When I use English: There is a Hole, Waiting to Eat Me, It’s Mouth Wide Open. Like a Vagina. Echo Comes Out. There is something painfully uncomfortable about watching a mouth move at that closeness, though I am reminded of a lifetime supply of discomfort that non-native English speakers/learners endure in order to grasp “good” English. Can you explain how this relates to Japanese identity, and how this contributes to a kind of cultural amnesia and self-Orientalization that you speak about?

MS: I was sent to England at the age of ten; my parents’ intention was for me to be educated in a “Western” way and to speak “good” English. Many in Japan believe in the necessity of mastering the English language due to its power but there is also a stagnant phenomenon within Japan that shames those with accents. I believe that this culture of shame is the sole reason why the majority of Japanese people don’t speak English at all which further motivates people’s obsession with “good” English. This is because Westernization, historically, has been seen as the equivalent of “modernization”. This is why Japan remains a country caught in the complicit opposition of being one of the first to “modernize” via Westernization in Asia, yet is still subordinate to Western countries. To sustain the imaginary superiority of Japan, Japan has also been complemented by a third party: an imaginary undesirable Asia which is underpinned by the country’s lingering asymmetrical power relations with other Asian countries. This has been re-asserted with the notion of soft power—the “Japan Brand Strategy”— a self-Orientalizing strategy propelled specifically to induce amnesia towards Japan’s wartime crimes.

How Japan aspires to be ethnically homogenous while wanting “whiteness” is also reflected in its language. For instance, Japan celebrates its ethnic purity, yet hāfus—which in most social contexts refer exclusively to Caucasian-mixed Japanese—are in many ways celebrated in mass media—a practice embedded in social norms. The term, hāfu, is in katakana (a Japanese syllabary system that Japanese textbooks explain to be for foreign loanwords). This textbook explanation regarding katakana frames Western words as “cool” while kango (Chinese-origin words) are defined as Japanese. Kango is codified in Japanese national dictionaries rather than foreign loanword dictionaries. Both the term hāfuand katakana reflect Japan’s historically changing relationships with other countries, such as the US—the dominant power in the West—and China, Japan’s recent economic-political hegemon. Such terms prove that Japan supports a dichotomous, totalizing distinction between that which is Japanese and that which is foreign in order to construct an exclusive national and cultural identity.

NT: Another interesting aspect of this work is that as a viewer and a “good” English speaker, I am confronted here by subtitles spelled out in the International Phonetic Alphabet–words that are quite frankly illegible to me. Could you talk about the significance of acknowledging this in the work?

MS: My intention was to highlight the discreet terror residing inside the acquisition of a new language, especially for ESL individuals—something that I am familiar with growing up abroad. In a standardized English context, ESL individuals’ dialects and registers are incommensurable with the hegemony of “Good English.” ESL students tend to find themselves in remedial classes in Western contexts situated in discourses that contribute to the construction of them as “lesser beings.” The subtitles spelled out in IPA adds pressure to the audience by situating them in the ESL learner’s subjectivity.

I also accidentally highlighted the experience of POC with ASD. As researchers suggest, autism continues to be underdiagnosed in BIPOC. I was diagnosed with ASD at the age of 27. I learnt that autistics fixate more on the mouth than eyes during an emotional conversation because emotionally charged topics (i.e. an English teacher demanding you to say “I saw sixty-six farmers laughing on the phone/farm in front of the mirror while checking that you are not using a Mandarin, Japanese, or Russian mouth position) place a high demand on working memory, which, when a threshold is surpassed, makes rendering information from the eye region particularly difficult.

Installation shot of Dreams Come True Very Much exhibition, 2021. Photo Courtesy of Artist.

NT: It’s interesting that you mention “indirect trauma.” I have recently been consumed with the concept of intergenerational trauma, but a particular kind–the trauma of not-knowing–that I have found myself in. For me, this trauma of not knowing resonates with how you think about 3:11 (the 2011 earthquake). Though you never physically experienced 3:11, you say that you developed an ownership over the memory of the event. How has this memory manifested over time through your work?

MS: This concept of artificial amnesia, or the trauma of not-knowing, was useful in thinking through Japanese nationalism and internalized Orientalism. This refers not only to the identities of Japanese but also diasporic identities; sometimes diasporas are coerced to assimilate or voluntarily white-wash themselves in order to survive. In terms of 3.11, for almost a decade, I had a sense of guilt for not experiencing 3.11 first-handedly. This guilt is perhaps a result of totalization of identity; but I developed a sense of ownership over my “memory” in a somewhat strategic way.

This came from an intention to counter the nationalist, male-dominant narratives embraced by Japanese media which reflects Japan’s ethnocentric and patriarchal socio-political structure, that disavows marginalized groups’ existence, as constitutive of the nation. This structure silences the subalterns—women, non-Japanese citizens, and other minority groups—to establish Japan as a country with a clean record. Japan has a history of doing that regarding its colonial history and war crimes committed in surrounding Asian countries. Through my research, I gained an understanding of the political nature of “memory” itself and that of 3.11. Memory is divergent, reiterative, and multiple. It does not exist outside of the boundaries of herstory. The official record of the 3.11 disaster is largely male-dominated, and this is also tied together with a strong socio-political pressure for Japan to erase the past of 3.11 in the name of “reconstruction.”

NT: How does the current Tokyo Olympics fit into the “Japan Brand Strategy?”

The “Japan Brand Strategy” is self-Orientalizing. It exploits Japanese popular culture through a Western-Orientalist lens. This is a mechanism for national mobilization to revitalize patriotic pride. The Olympics, or the so-called “the Reconstruction Olympics” in Japan, uses this chauvinistic nation-branding to forget the 3.11 and nuclear accident and, by doing so, it forgets the victims of the accident. The government’s use of “recovery” rhetoric or, what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism,”[3] aims to construct a particular imagined post-recovery “Japan” with a clean record. This was done through bribery and corruption. An immense amount of resources that were to be spent on the disaster-hit regions in Tohoku 3.11-affected regions were allocated towards funding the Olympics instead. What the Olympics, which is a super spreader disaster, is revealing, is the utter inability of Japan’s nation-state to protect its own citizens. It shattered the public’s trust in the government almost entirely. Over 80% of Japanese oppose the Olympics this summer. The Olympics also shows how the economic driven “Japan Brand Strategy” not only disavows the existence of marginalized groups as constitutive of the nation, but puts the safety of the entire nation at risk.

nstallation shot of Inhabiting Distant Ghosts, 2021. Photo Courtesy of Artist.

NT: Language is certainly a significant theme throughout this exhibit; from the way you satirize it in When I use English: There is a Hole to your own use of the English language within the elaborate titles of your work. But I am also thinking here of Inhabiting Distant Ghosts, a moving diptych portraying two bodies of seemingly calm waters. In this work, it is your own writing that confronts the viewer with an underlying fear that haunts Japan. You write:

“There has always been a ghost that haunts those who forget and those who leave rice in their bowls.

Perhaps it is Japan.

I feel its presence.

In the morning, the teacups are clean,

the dust on the shelves is wiped,

and the garbage is neatly put away.

At night, I can hear the click-clack of footsteps

echoing as if something is walking through a hectic station.

Sometimes, it leaves the floor drenched,

the shelves overturned.

It makes the doors rattle

when there is no wind

and occasionally shakes the ground.”

Could you tell us more about this collective fear, what this does to Japanese identity, and where you see yourself within this collective fear?

MS: I came across this term, “collective, biological fear” during a conversation with theorist and performance artist Ayumi Goto. It is the collective fear of earthquakes, tsunamis, and radioactive substances released into the sea. These fears haunt the people who experienced 3.11, directly or not. Perhaps, it is the strongest biological bond I have with Japan. This fear, for me, is also tied with intense haji (the concept of public shaming) in Japan which especially has an overwhelming power over women. Japanese women’s sensitivity towards shaming is not natural but is constructed: Japanese schools imbue rigorous notions of propriety into children from an early age, especially to girls. Such sensitivity to public shaming is so intense in Japan that the imaginary gaze—which takes the form of a ghost in my poem—alone tends to generate shame which occasionally leads to self-censorship. What underlies haji is the code whereby individuals are expected to not violate norms.

 NT: What’s next for you Maari?

I’m currently working on a VR/AR/XR project which is an extension of Dreams Come True Very Much. My concern regarding the uprising of ultra-nationalism in Japan and the data-colonized future became twofold, both regarding the colonial past haunting the future. I’m seeking methods capable of breaking silence and producing catharsis, by incorporating contingency of selves into immersive, simulated experiences. I also wish to generate an experience to examine how the user’s understanding of language re-adjusts itself to adapt to a language system that this preordained artificial circumstance presents.

Dreams Come True Very Much is available for viewing on Sugawara’s website. She will also be screening her work as part of the upcoming 2021 Vector Festival at the Toronto Outdoor Picture Show. The project will be exhibited at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre as part of Nuit Blanche 2022 and will be her first solo show in Canada. Currently based in Tokyo, Sugawara is a student at the NEWVIEW SCHOOL JAPAN, where she is experimenting with xR (extended reality) and exploring 3-D space using VR/AR/MR technology. She will present new work at the end of the year.

[1] John Caughie, Playing at being American: Games and tactics In logics of television, ed. P. Mellencamp: (London: British Film Institute, 1990), 44-58.

[2] Cabinet Office, “Moonshot International Symposium Initiative Report,” (December 2019). 13. accessed from https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/stmain/mspaper3.pdf

[3] The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. (2021). Naomi Klein. Picador.

Memory and Place: In Conversation with Michelle Paterok

Michelle Paterok. Night Snow, oil on panel, 9×12″, 2021.

Interview by Adi Berardini

Michelle Paterok’s paintings are hauntingly arresting, depicting everyday landscapes and portraits of those surrounding her using deep hues of violet, cerulean blue, and pale pinks. In her painting untitled (snow) (2021), footprints in the snow lead over the scene as if walking over the horizon at the end of the earth, depicting a solemn landscape. Almost as if viewing the surrounding environment in a nightscape, the imagery in her work looks like it’s been pulled from a dream, like emotive snapshots of everyday life.

In the painting Spring Ends (2019), leaves are suspended in space, falling from mid-air amongst the obscured background. Although they take a familiar shape, the leaves seem uncanny like another dimension exists within them. The overlapping imagery is reminiscent of the difficulty in remembering life moments as they replay in our heads repeatedly, each variation straying from the next like an altered reel.

Paterok often uses photography from her travels abroad and everyday life as a starting point in her work, allowing for interpretation in the rendering of the images to embody memory and lived experience. Through this, she is interested in capturing the “poetic infrastructures” of everyday and exploring the subjective nature of memory and how it relates to place. Michelle Paterok is currently pursuing her Master’s in Fine Arts at Western University. She speaks more about her practice in the following interview.

Michelle Paterok. Night on Earth, oil on linen, 14×18″, 2021.

Can you further explain your interest in place and how you address the poetics of everyday life through your work? Can you speak to your interest in travel as well?

When I was an art student in my undergraduate years, I had the opportunity to travel abroad to complete a research project. Something about being in a completely different environment and country made me consider my immediate surroundings more closely than when I was here in Canada. For that project, I had a specific research interest, but the idea of a fascination with my (often mundane) immediate surroundings has persisted, and I have redirected that lens to my local environment here. I’ve found that if I pay everyday scenes enough attention, they often transform into unexpectedly beautiful, interesting things. In a way, it’s also destabilizing: looking at something seemingly familiar long enough, it starts to become unfamiliar. The practice of closely at things I may have otherwise taken for granted or not noticed—examining and reflecting on the things I encounter in everyday life with more consideration—is part of what sustains my interest in making art. When I sit and I paint a landscape, I have to contemplate what it meant to be in that place as I record it on a canvas. That exercise is fascinating to me.

I’ve noticed that in your work too. The paintings are of everyday scenes but the way you approach them is other-worldly, it reminds me of dreamscapes.

I like that idea of the dreamscape. When I was first learning how to paint, I aimed to represent things as realistically as possible—but once I felt I had a good handle of the medium, representing reality became much less interesting to me. Right now, I’m thinking a lot about how I can convey a precise emotional atmosphere in my work. What interests me the most currently is representing subjective experience and a sense of mood. The recent work has drawn just as much on imagination and memory as it has on references from life or photos.

I’ve found that if I pay everyday scenes enough attention, they often transform into unexpectedly beautiful, interesting things. 

You have a strong sense of layered imagery in your work, almost like double exposure photography. Can you describe your process of using photography as reference in your paintings? How does this tie into the broader themes of your work?

Working in layers started by accident. It was a way to reuse old canvases that I had deemed unsuccessful and left in the corner of the studio, hoping for a solution to materialize. After a few weeks (sometimes months or years), I lose my attachment to these images and feel less precious about them. Usually, rather than trying to complete the painting, I paint something new on top of the old image. Through this process, incidental narratives are created, and later I embraced them. I like the idea of material memories embedded in the layers of the paintings.

The relationship between painting and photography has a long history—the invention of photography fundamentally changed the medium of painting. Painting has existed in dialogue with photography ever since. In my own work, I think about painting’s affordances—what can paintings do that photos might not be able to? One of these is the kind of emotional atmosphere I mentioned previously. Representing subjective experiences, like perception, memory or dreams, is one of the affordances I think painting has. I often use photos as a kind of foundation for some of the work’s formal aspects, but reinterpret light, colour and composition through the process of painting. I’ve recently tried to challenge this working process, as it’s become something like a habit for me over the years. These days I’m more often working from observation or memory—the latter of which has really changed the direction of the work.

Michelle Paterok. Spring Ends, oil on wood, 10×16″, 2019.

In your work Spring Ends, you use a sense of obscurification that provides a snapshot glimpse into a landscape from the outline of falling leaves which I was intrigued by. I was wondering if you could speak more about this piece and your use of both opaqueness and fragmentation?

At the time I painted it, I was living in rural Japan and making work about my experiences there. I initially painted a landscape. Where I was living, the landscape was full of rice paddies, which farmers flood in the spring. I tried to capture the reflection of the sky in the flooded fields, but (as often happens when I try to paint a scene that’s already too beautiful) the painting wouldn’t work—it gets dangerously close to hyper-sentimental territory.

The painting sat unfinished for a while. A few months later, in the fall, the ginkgo tree near my workplace shed its leaves, which covered the ground in a huge yellow and green blanket. I thought the silhouette of the leaves might speak to the landscape I had painted previously. Both scenes—the flooded rice field and the fallen leaves—indicate seasonal change and time’s passage. Using the silhouette of the leaves to reveal and obscure parts of the landscape, I was thinking about how time exists in our memories: some aspects of memories obscured and others clear, but both experiences of memory are mediated by the present moment.

It might also be important to mention that all of the images that I use in my work are based on sketches or photos I took. I don’t usually go on missions to find art photos or anything like that. Often, I’ll be going for a walk, or be on my way to work, and I’ll see things on the street that I think are interesting or poetic [so] I try to record them.

I’m also a walker. I love to walk, especially when I lived in Vancouver, and even here, I just walk around my neighbourhood. If you look you can find some interesting things. Even though they’re just part of everyday life, they can spark interest in different ways.

Yes! I’ve always gravitated towards walking as a means of collecting references. I used to be self-conscious of this way of working, especially among peers with more research-based practices. Although, I guess walking is its own form of research, a kind of local research. It reminds me of the flaneurs—the idea of wandering as a means of reflecting on contemporary life.

Michelle Paterok. Existing Among Others, oil on linen, 14×18″, 2021.

What has your process been working on larger paintings? How do you think scale affects your process?

When I was living in Japan, I converted my living room into a studio, and there wasn’t much space to make large work. The pandemic added more challenges, and the result was that I didn’t make any large work for about three years. It wasn’t until recently, when I started my MFA, that I had the space to work large scale again.

It might just be a result of working this way for such a long time, but small-scale comes more easily for me: I can approach the canvas intuitively, and if I need to make a big change, the stakes (cost of materials, time) are low. There is also something important to me in the small-scale work about the economy of the brushstrokes. When the work is scaled up, for me it requires more planning—sketches, colour studies—and being minimal in my mark-making becomes much more challenging. That said, it seems like the current work is asking to be big. I’m interested in creating work that’s more immersive. I’m trying to listen to the work more and let it go in the direction it suggests it wants to, rather than imposing my own restrictions on it.

Who are some artists that inspire you and your work?

Even though I’m mostly making paintings these days, print artists have been a really big influence. I saw a retrospective of Tetsuya Noda’s work at the British Museum a few years ago, and I was really moved. I still think about it often. Since the late 60s, he’s created a diary series that’s become his life’s work—he has a distinct process of photographing places, objects or people in his daily life, then screen printing them onto paper printed with a subtle woodblock texture. I think the woodblock is a nod to the tradition of ukiyo-e, but his works depart significantly from traditional Japanese printmaking due to his use of a camera. What I really love about his work is that it’s personal and specific, but at the same time, somehow highly universal. Compiling all these seemingly mundane moments from daily life, when done over such a long period of time and with such focus and craft, turns them into something that feels really meaningful.

Of course, I also love paintings! Vija Celmins is my current favourite. I’ve also been staring at Maja Ruznic’s work a lot. My friend also recently introduced me to Agnes Pelton’s work, those paintings are magical.

Michelle Paterok. Ghost Plant, oil on canvas, 24×24″, 2021.

There can be a lot of meaning in the everyday. I think that’s the biggest question with painting is “what do I paint?” And like you were saying, there’s so much you can do with colour—It’s so tied to emotions. I’m drawn to your work because of the way you use colour too.

Before I start a painting, I ask myself, “what kind of emotional climate do I want this to have?” like I mentioned before. Often reducing my variables in terms of my palette has been a lot more conducive to capturing what I’m after as opposed to working with a lot of colours. This has grown into working with more of a limited palette in a more intentional way than what I used to. 

I was looking at these historical palettes, limited palettes people used to use. I made a few paintings with the Zorn palette, which is traditionally white and only three other colours—but its namesake (Anders Zorn) was able to get almost a whole spectrum of hues with just these colours. Working often with fewer hues, but more intention, has been useful for me lately in addressing the question of “how do I want this painting to feel?” Colour can be so evocative, and it’s one of those things that artists can spend their whole lives trying to understand. There are almost endless combinations and colour relationships. As a painter, you can never get bored.

Do you have any plans or projects coming up in the future that you’d like to discuss? I will be part of a Western MFA show in the fall—date TBA. My work right now is all very much in development, and I’m spending most of my summer in the studio seeing how things progress. I love this stage of the process where things feel like they could go in any direction. I’m excited to be starting a new larger-scale body of work and I’ll share things as they develop.

You can view more of Michelle Paterok’s work on her website and Instagram.