Shun Okada Exhibition “SUNA ARASHI”

Nov 20th Fri – Dec 2nd Wed, 2020

At gallery commune
We are having an exhibition “SUNA ARASHI” by Shun Okada, an artist living in Tokyo who challenges pictorial expression that explores the middle between digital and analog.

—–
With the transition from analog broadcasting to terrestrial digital broadcasting, the TV sandstorm gradually disappeared. This phenomenon, formally called snow noise or white noise, occurs when innumerable monochrome rough points sway. Though the image of this noise can be terrifying, as used in the production of horror movies, it made me feel more meditative and calm than scared.

And when I was temporarily depressed, I relied on the noise.

When I first drew it, I didn’t copy it like a photo; I just put white and black paint on the screen. What appeared after I finished drawing was not a monotonous screen in which black and white were evenly arranged, but a complicated screen with “fluctuations” like noise.

When there is no channel to receive, analog television receives weak radio waves floating in space, amplifies them and displays them as noise. It is the aftermath of all kinds of movements, like the cosmic microwave background radiation generated during the Big Bang. When I thought about the “fluctuations” that appeared in my work, I saw myself as the receiver, conveying the faint aftermath of various things around me. This is not the TV, but the noise that humans receive and generate.

This time, I decided to draw a noise piece again because Covid19 made the empty city feel as lonely as a stopped TV. The loneliness is not like the screen disappearing on a digital TV. Instead, people are individually anxious and lonely, waving and shaking like the noise on the screen, receiving a weak signal while stopping the wave. It also contains the complexity of fighting.

Today, the city is slowly regaining its vitality, but social turmoil shows no signs of slowing. Many people are living hard in it. I keep transmitting to the canvas each person’s individual aftermath of this chaotic situation.

—–

Shun Okada
Born in Ibaraki prefecture in 1992, lives in Tokyo. Growing up with the explosive growth of digital devices. He is interested in early digital phenomena such as analog noise and NES bugs that are disappearing now, and is making pictorial expressions that explore the middle between digital and analog.
instagram:@oka_un