Кано Окучи

The pieces by the Japanese artist Kano Okuuchi are inspired by the aesthetic of vintage adverts, old American comics and pin-up imagery. Working with collage, painting and the technique of transfer, the artist rigorously orchestrates her compositions. From existing images that she changes and transforms, Kano Okuuchi creates a new fictional territory, a “Frankenstein” style invention in her own words.

Having developed a practice as a pair with her husband Olivier Broise, a secondary school art teacher, since 2007, the artist engages in a reinterpretation of films, adverts and cartoons from the 1950s and 1970s in her compositions. The couple’s idea is to revive a collective visual memory by acting of the unconscious and by provoking reminiscence from universal imagery.

The canvases are then pre-visualised on a computer in order to anticipate the different interventions, the different layers of paint, the different stages of the collage. The backgrounds, mainly made up of recovered posters inscribe the process in the tradition of famous poster designers from the 1960s and French New Realism, all the while affirming the vintage spirit of 1950s and 1960s American advertising.

Revisiting popular imagery, Kano Okuuchi enjoys common references and aesthetic stereotypes in order to propose unique compositions, both new and steeped in everyone’s memory: “Whether it’s in Mad, Dr. No or Woman, the stereotypical images make sense for everyone. From close-up or afar, there are several keys to enter each piece.”