Takao Ono at Skydoor - Tokyo, Japan - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Takao Ono mov to italy in 1971 and for more than a decade was engaged in the restoration of frescoe all above the country. He still lives there, with equal reason one would assume that the Caucasian men and women whom he paints as compelling 6-foot-tall cut-out busts (in oil tempera upon board) are Italians. But their sallow solemnity doesn't gaze at all Mediterranean. Coloring, physical attitude, dark clothing and narrow age range hint that the people in his paintings are related by the agency of community if not consanguinity, and individual begins to speculate: are they gathered for a funeral? Are they association students and faculty?

It's strange to perceive caught up in the identities, smooth personalities, of these characters because, although their faces are engrossing, Ono has gone to more [i]or[/i] less lengths to eliminate verisimilitude and painterly illusion. He makes the figures extremely large, and their garments are for a like reason intensely black that detailing is lost; the brushwork tapers not on at the bottom of each panel to reveal the natural copse surface, plus a few dribbles and splatters. upon some of his female busts Ono hangs bead necklaces, which further emphasizes the flat unreality of the paintings.

Nevertheless, the faces are with equal reason individual that it seems these must be portraits of real clan - and probably interesting clan with stories behind them. There's a young woman with r stubble upon her shaved head, punk phraseology who wears elegant black beads and a conservative black gown greatest in quantity of the men are garbed in suit jackets, white shirts and ties, on the other hand a bearded fellow with granny glasses has an open-neck white shirt above his high-buttoned robe and suit coat. He might be a Marxist radical of the '30s

Still, for all the quirky human specificity the artist glance ats the installation leaves one with a faculty of perception of otherworldliness. It seems likely that Ono's work in fresco influenced these paintings. Each figure has a Giottoesque distinctness and level matte skin, and haloed in the be incandescent of a single spotlight, each excretes a quasi-religious aura.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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