TAM OCHIAI – EVERYONE HAS TWO PLACES
2015-01-26Tam Ochiai will present a group of paintings that contend with the idea of travel in both its literal and metaphorical configuration. Entitled Everyone Has Two Places, the works in this series employ a premise that initially seems suspiciously oblique: the names of two cities painted on formally divergent canvases. Our understanding of each painting is alternately affirmed or radically altered by the individual parenthetical titles that accompany them, some of which include the names of dead writers, artists, actors and musicians both historical – as in T.S. Eliot (London, St. Louis) – and fictitious – Humbert Humbert (Paris, Parkington).
Further investigation reveals that some of these paintings contain the birth and death cities of their subjects, bookends that not only chart the movement of the body but likewise bracket the volume of a life’s work. Others are more mysterious in their text-sources, often taking their two locations from details of Ochiai’s own life – such as the start and endpoints of a transnational train trip. By proposing that the movement between two places can function as index – both geographical and temporal – these paintings trigger a steady avalanche of connotations both shared and deeply personal.
Opposite – New York, New York (there are many examples), 2014
Exhibition runs through to February 15th, 2015
team (gallery, inc.)
47 Wooster Street
New York
NY 10013
