Kaz Oshiro

Kaz Oshiro meticulously crafts trompe l'oeil replicas of common objects that are in fact three-dimensional paintings made using canvas, stretchers, bondo and acrylic paint. Music amplifiers, dorm-room fridges, double-stack washer/dryers and scuffed credenzas form thehumble subjects of his oeuvre. As hybrids, they blur the boundary between painting and sculpture.With their fanatical attention to detail and focus on everyday life they challenge the conventions of representation and ask us to look closer and distrust what we see and take for grantedaround us all day long. As appropriations in an age saturated with appropriations, they effortlessly reference pop art, minimalism, conceptual and finish fetish art — without beingdominated by them. Oshiro says that he « hopes to create Post-Pop Art (painting) that juxtaposes Pop and Minimalism with the flavor of Neo-Geo, appropriation, and Photorealism,and present them as a still life of my generation. » But the objects are well more than art about art. Punk-rock stickers and other sub-culture paraphernalia reveal the Japanese born Oshiro tobe an astute reader of American culture both high and low.