The work of Masahide Otani is exemplary. Each object is made of tinted plywood: chairs, tables, an easel, and scaffolding. But his objects are not exactly what they outwardly pretend to be. The scaffolding is not scaffolding, but rather, an object said to be scaffolding, an object formulated as scaffolding. And it is in this that the works are fundamentally exemplary, paradigmatic, because they are formulated in parallel. Reconstitution 2 is no more than café tables and chairs. Je fais is just a set of scaffolding. Chambre espagnole is nothing more than a canvas frame on an easel, yet all of these things are literally something else. They are a "second time", a remake, a making again of, which means that these objects produce a shift within a gap. They acquire as a result, an exemplary and unquantifiable singularity. Literal and exemplary, because it's about a repetition, a re-formulation: scaffolding is scaffolding is a tautology. But of course there is a shift in this second time, the object is not exactly the same because we must change our way of seeing it and of using it. Masahide Otani plays this shift, this gap. Firstly, by keeping the appearance of the objects intact, while neutralizing their original use through a change of material: none of the chairs can be used and it is obviously impossible to use the scaffolding. Then, by maintaining the possibility of function in these objects even though he perturbs it: in "Chambre espagnole", despite the function of the easel being maintained, it is doubly absorbed, because not only is the object unusable but it also makes reference to a "perspectivist" illusion, in which Velàsquez himself could get lost. And finally, in exposing precisely this shift and this gap, even down to language itself: that which is literal, repeated, is in itself, and no doubt it is here that their meaning is most profound; the translation in the meaning of the gap in their usage, in the meaning of this a-grammaticality, "Je fait", restores to language, to subject, to form and from what I can see, restores a new possible use that - makes it be again, sufficiently to render them their power, to the indifferent truth of tautology.' (Giorgio Agamben, Bartleby o della contingenza). However in these other uses, a shadow is already taking shape: these empty chairs, this empty canvas stretcher and this scaffolding, standing against the white walls, say or end up issuing a kind of construction site warning, "Caution: Men at Work" Are these ruins or is this work in progress ? The works of Masahide Otani are here, yet again, exemplary.
Fabien Vallos
Masahide Otani
Born in 1982 in Shibukawa
Lives and works in Bordeaux
Education
2007 DNSEP, École des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux
2007- 2008 Post graduated, École des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
Solo Shows
2013 Figures du vide, Cortex Athletico, Paris
2012 Setting a painting, Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux
2009 Sensation de non-événement, (with the support of the Drac Île de France), Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux
2006 Masahide Otani, Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux
2005 Masahide Otani, Design Planets gallery, Maebashi, Japan
Infinite-simal, Concept Space gallery, Shibukawa, Japan
Group Shows
2013 Campagnes/ Campagne, Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux
Nuit Jaune, included in the program Nuit Blanche, Espace des Arts sans Frontières, Paris
2012 Art & Paysage, Biennale d'Artigues-près-Bordeaux
My own private #2, The Snake, Cortex Athletico, Paris
2011 Biennale d'art contemporain, Anglet
Chapelle vidéo #1, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Saint Denis
2010 Armory Show, Cortex Athletico, NY
Dynasty, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Matériaux divers et autres bonnes nouvelles, Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux
FID, Festival du film documentaire, Montévidéo, Marseille
2009 Liste 09 -Tthe young art fair, Cortex Athletico, Basel
Une exposition de peinture, Zoo galerie, Nantes
Travelling museum, Düsseldorf
2008 Le vide n'a pas de porte de sortie, Ancienne Banque du Japon, Hiroshima
Ce qui revient, Galerie ACDC, Brest
RDV08, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon
Extérieur jour, Cortex Athletico chez Immanence, Paris
2007 Liste 07, The Young Art Fair, Cortex Athletico, Basel
Imbéciles habitants, Concarneau, France
Equilibre instable, CAPC musée d?art contemporain de Bordeaux
Atsuo Hukuda ?Travelling Museum, Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux
What day is it today ? à suivre... , Bordeaux
2006 Mu -no-shodo,University of Gunma, Maebashi, Japan
Atsuo Hukuda ?Travelling Museum, Parkhaus Im Malkastenpark,Düsseldorf
FIAC, Cortex Athletico, Cour Carrée du Louvre, Paris
Press
2009 Les galeries françaises à l'assault de Volta, Roxana Azimi, Le journal des arts, Nr 304, may 29th - june 11th 2009, p. 23
2006 Ouverture prochaine de la galerie Cortex Athletico, Sud-Ouest, January
Grants
2009 Drac Île de France
Price
2007 Banque Crédit Agricole / École des Beaux-Arts & Capc - Musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux
Collection
Conseil général Seine St Denis