Tam Ochiai                                            

“the back part of something that is connected to the back of something, especially something that is moving away from you”
3 March –  16 April 2005

Galerie Lisa Ruyter is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Austria of artist Tam Ochiai. This drawing installation is titled “the back part of something, or something that is connected to the back of something, especially something that is moving away from you.” It is a continuation of what the artist calls his “Tail” series.

Much of Ochiai’s work is deliberately child-like in language, but includes abundant references that exist for a cultural intelligentsia. Most of his subjects are women, or are at least ambiguously feminine, or ambiguously human, and most of his obsessions are of French origin.

Made in no particular style, or rather made from a compendium of a variety of styles, Tam Ochiai’s work is about style, about its construction and formal functioning, in art, literature, and in fashion: in life, and in life-style. In the work of Tam Ochiai, style is moved from the periphery to the center. Style is not used to cover or reveal something inside, rather it is an integrated and necessary part of human functioning along with language and craft, with the corporeal, the sensual, the psychological and the sexual.

In this exhibition, Ochiai has confined himself to the medium of drawing. Despite the variety and complexity of the ideas in the work, Ochiai retains a consistent ephemeral quality, the clearest marker of the artist’s own personal ‘style.’

Tam Ochiai is currently in the exhibition “Flashback” at the Kunstverein Freiburg. He will be included in the upcoming “25 Years of the Deutsche Bank Collection” at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. He shows with Team Gallery in New York, Tomio Koyama in Tokyo, Arndt & Partner in Berlin, and Francesca Kaufmann in Milan. He lives and works in New York.