Rosamund Felsen Gallery’s first show of 2009, Kaz Oshiro’s False Gestures, presents both hyper-realism and abstraction. While the medium for the pieces is listed as Acrylic on stretched canvas most of the pieces read as sculpture.  Oshiro’s highly meticulous works act as both, presenting the question of whether the work is painted sculpture or sculptural painting.  Beyond this question though, Oshiro’s work focuses in onto minute details, asking the viewer to refocus his or her own eye onto the small things left behind, and the marks that are made unknowingly.  The work itself is highly detailed and flawless and in elegant contrast to this, his paintings center around detritus and remnants, the small lines “drawn” by setting down a dripping paper cup of coffee.

The first room of the gallery contains four rectangular canvases with perfectly rounded edges.  These canvases are black with either duct tape markings or dust markings.  They are accompanied by two shaped canvases, one orange the other turquoise, that hold their abstract weight when placed in the same room as the perfectly replicated Zero Case painting.  The round-edged rectangular shape of the wall pieces is mimicked in the perfectly realistic acrylic and bondo on stretched canvas, Zero Case (duct tape and residue), which appears to be an actual Zero case placed a few feet from the gallery wall until the back side reveals the case’s interior wooden structure.

Each piece in the show seems to have its own pair.  In the second room of the gallery is another zero case accompanied by two round-edged blue pieces and two yellow trash bins with the words “Thank You” across them. The hollow bodied trash bins, which have the same open back, wood interior as the cases, have elegantly painted coffee stains and cigarette burns.  The rendering of these marks are remarkable and the viewer constantly finds himself wondering if they are painted or real.

-Anna Ayeroff

(Images:  Kaz Oshiro, Untitled Corner Piece (Turquoise). 2008, Acrylic on stretched canvas, Left section 30 3/8 x 32 1/8 x 9 1/4"; Untitled Painting (dust) 2. 2008, Acrylic on stretched canvas, 24 x 18 1/4 x 2 1/4"; Right section 30 3/8 x 62 x 9 1/4"; Zero Case (duct tape and residue). 2008, Acrylic and bondo on stretched canvas, 18 1/4 x 26 x 9"; all images courtesy Rosamund Felsen Gallery)