Enrico Isamu Oyama

LIKE A PRIME NUMBER

Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, London
26 February - 11 April, 2016
Opening: 25 February, 6-8M

Artist Talk: 4 March, 6-8PM
Guest: Lena Fritsch (Assistant Curator, Tate Modern)

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation presents Like A Prime Number, the solo exhibition by Japanese-Italian visual artist Enrico Isamu Oyama. Oyama is best known for the signature style Quick Turn Structure (QTS): minimal, free-flowing motifs of repetitive lines, developed from the visual language of graffiti culture and contextualized in the realm of contemporary art.

  QTS is perceived by the artist as an infinite driving force with its own life; one that inhabits a higher dimension invisible to us. These pieces are called FFIGURATI, a term coined by the artist referring to the word “graffiti” and the Italian expression “figùrati” (literally translated as “figure it out yourself”), numbered in the order of their creation.

  Oyama envisions each FFIGURATI like a prime number. Although they are both a part of an infinite continuous entity larger than themselves, they are simultaneously brought to this world as specific, one-time-only singularities generated out of the metaphysical continuity. Discovering a pattern within the neverending series of prime numbers has been a longstanding mystery in the history of mathematics; similarly, pinpointing the structure and form of QTS is something even the artist himself is not fully aware of.