A kiss means kinship to world-renowned Spanish painter Okuda San Miguel, even if that kiss takes place between physical and virtual worlds. The artist’s upcoming exhibition at Corey Helford Gallery, Kisses Between Universes, explores the evolution of communication and connection in the digital age with new work in his iconographic style. The exhibition’s titular “kiss” symbolizes the potential for human connection behind even our most alienating technologies.
Using rainbow-colored geometric shapes to pattern his work, Okuda creates a distinct visual language that blends digital aesthetics with architectural elements and organic human forms. His street art, instantly recognizable, appears across buildings, railroads, and abandoned factories worldwide in the same prismatic style. Merging elements of ‘90s aesthetics with social critique, Okuda dissects the effects of global capitalism on human relationships and contemporary society.
Kisses Between Universes returns to the gallery space for an exploration of physical and virtual spaces. “Kisses Between Enemies I” explores the possibility of a connection between American and Chinese citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic through a real, albeit masked, kiss. “Faces in Digital Landscapes I” and its similarly titled counterpart combine human features (and emotions) with a surreal digital scene packed with prismatic fractals, striped trees, and birds bathing in rainbow-colored puddles. Exploring existentialism, the universe, and the contradictions inherent in society, Okuda faces the future with curiosity, envisioning a symphony of color, communication, and interpersonal connection between humans everywhere.
Open to the public and free of charge, Kisses Between Universes runs April 6 through May 11, 2024, at Corey Helford Gallery in downtown Los Angeles alongside Chicago-based illustrator Travis Lampe’s Small Time Buffoonist. For more information, please visit the gallery’s website here.
A kiss means kinship to world-renowned Spanish painter Okuda San Miguel, even if that kiss takes place between physical and virtual worlds.
Okuda San Miguel: Website | Instagram | YouTube | Purchase Work
All photos published with permission of the artist(s).
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