GAKU OGAKI

Lives and works in Osaka, Japan

Artist statement

We live alongside real, yet invisible, horrors. War, division, political polarization, the obsession with appearance, misinformation, and the pressures created by contemporary society. These forces are immense, ambiguous, and often difficult to articulate. Through my ongoing series Contemporary Mononoke, I give these fears names and forms, transforming them into Mononoke—supernatural beings rooted in Japanese folklore and visual culture. For centuries in Japan, people have given form to invisible fears and inexplicable phenomena through yōkai and mononoke. I draw upon this tradition not to recreate the past, but to use its visual language as a way of confronting the anxieties of the present. Each Mononoke embodies a specific fear or distortion within contemporary society. By naming and visualizing what is otherwise abstract and overwhelming, I seek to create a distance from fear—a space in which we can observe it, question it, and begin to confront it. Printmaking is central to this practice. Drawing on the history of Japanese prints as images that circulated widely through society, I use contemporary multi-color printmaking to give these new Mononoke a physical and reproducible form. To depict fear, and to look at it, is to begin to overcome it. Contemporary Mononoke is an evolving body of work that connects society, horror, Japanese visual culture, and contemporary art—creating a new folklore for the fears of our time.

Artwork