Summer Song // Shogo Okada at Martha Street Studio
Summer Song // Shogo Okada at Martha Street Studio
Opens January 12, 2024
Closes February 16, 2024
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Working within a multi-disciplinary practice reverberating between art-making and music-making, Shogo Okada (QB) explores playful visual expression through the print works in Summer Song with intuitive, empathetic consideration. Building the exhibition from individual motifs the way a DJ builds a set, Summer Song takes its title and inspiration from a Dave Brubeck Quartet song of the same name. With precision and vibrant colour, Okada curates a warming ensemble of works that resonate with memories and impressions of summer.
From the lushness of a tomato plant in full red bloom, to suggestions of an incomprehensible giraffe on a lazy dog day, Summer Song crafts an enigmatic view of warmer days. Resisting a linear reading in favour of exploring spatial relationships between each work, Shogo doesn’t want you to think too much. Instead, he wants you to feel the rhythm and the relationship of each work, then experience them all like one playlist.
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Born in Osaka, Japan, Shogo Okada lives and works in Montréal, Québec. His practice explores the worlds of visual arts and music, and he is influenced both by counterculture and diverse historical eras. His technique shows impressive precision and warmth expressed by screen-printing without digital processes, watercolour drawings, and analog music production. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and fairs in Canada and Japan. Okada’s work is included in many private collections and in public and corporate collections including the Bibliothèque et Archives nationale du Québec (BAnQ), Capital One USA, National Bank of Canada, and BMO.