Collection: Aya Onodera

Aya Onodera's work breathes, lives, moves, and reacts within itself. Like organic matter, the combinations of light and shadow, color, and spatial depth are striking. She represents the intangible; she makes the invisible visible.

Dark blue hues mingle with bright moments on the canvas; the paint seems to flow across the surface, captivating the viewer. In her series of "Sea Veins," the artist processes the events of the 2011 earthquake in the Tohoku region, which deeply moved and affected her. The colors become three-dimensional, set in motion, enveloping us while simultaneously conveying a meditative calm. Intense and all-encompassing, they manifest themselves, becoming expansive, while the works appear to represent light itself—as if they were practically glowing.

Her series ›Fragments‹ manifests itself in bright, pastel pinks, golden-yellow moments, and pearls applied to the canvas, creating warm pictorial forms. They move between increasingly abstract color worlds and the traceable marks of the artist's hand, inscribed on the canvas with oil paint. "I immerse myself completely in a painting, finding myself in a perfect sanctuary, undisturbed by anyone. This thought comes to me quite naturally while painting," the artist describes her creative process. She draws inspiration from her surroundings and memories of various places with which she has special connections, thus transforming fragments of experience into images.

Aya Onodera was born in Japan in 1984, where she began her studies in design and art in Tokyo. She then spent time as a guest student at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she studied under Prof. Frank Badur and Prof. Burkhard Held from 2008 to 2011. She has lived and worked in Berlin since 2005.

Vita

Artist portrait: Courtesy of the artist