LAS VEGAS, NEV.- MGM Resorts continues its celebration of Japanese art, introducing renowned artist Yasuaki Onishi at Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art and the Artist Studio at Bellagio. On August 12, Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art unveiled Permeating Landscape, a solo exhibition by Onishi featuring two large-scale installations that reinterpret the principle elements of sculpture including mass, volume, motion and shape. In September 2019, in conjunction with his BGFA exhibit, Onishi will begin creating a new sculpture at the Artist Studio using locally sourced materials and his unique adaptation of traditional metalwork and casting techniques.

Guests may recognize Onishi’s work as he previously presented at BGFA as part of a group exhibition Primal Water in 2018. In his solo exhibition, Onishi showcases pointed use of simple materials like wire and plastic. Furthering Onishi’s viewpoint on negative space, Vertical Volume has been made from 12 cylindrical polyethylene bags, spread across a wide area of space. Activated by vertical motion, the volume of each bag expands and contracts, oscillating between empty and full. The second installation Permeating Landscape, sharing the name of the exhibit, is a new work created specifically for the exhibition. It employs hanging wire that weaves together a mountainous form that allows guests to walk under an airy amorphous space. Two-dimensional works of mixed media and photography can also be found throughout showcasing Onishi’s signature techniques that utilize materials including glue, graphite, metallic powder and aluminum.

The Artist Studio at Bellagio allows guests the opportunity to observe as artists create new works. During Onishi’s residency, he will draw on the practices he learned as an art student to create a large-scale permanent sculpture that engages with nature and negative space through materiality and a process he calls “casting the invisible.” Utilizing a locally sourced tree as the foundation of his sculpture, Onishi will build a steel exoskeleton around the tree’s branches using a special welding and burning process. The resulting work is strikingly bare and intentionally empty, reminding the viewer of the process of the work’s creation.

“I am suggesting systems that go beyond the human hand to trigger bodily sensations of sharing a work and a space, and I am exploring ways of knowing this world and its opposite,” says artist Yasuaki Onishi. “Using materials that tend not to retain clearly defined shapes, I create works that have significant effects on spaces. They are sculptures that do not point to any particular phenomena but leave much to be interpreted by the viewer. Handling what is ‘other than it’ allows ‘it itself’ to become clearly visible. By considering its extremities and its opposite side, and supplementing the hollows and voids with imagination, it is possible for a person to find their actual substances on the basis of sparse clues. ”

Onishi’s BGFA exhibition will remain on view through October 27 and his Artist Studio residency will end late 2019.

Yasuaki Onishi is an internationally celebrated artist working in the mediums of installation, sculpture and painting. Onishi studied sculpture at University of Tsukuba and Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan. His work has been exhibited in solo shows at institutions across Japan and abroad, such as at The Wilfrid Israel Museum in Hazorca, IL and at the Aichi Prefectural Museum in Nagoya, JP. Onishi was also included in Ways of Worldmaking in 2011 at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, JP. The artist’s work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions at institutions such as Riverside Art Museum, Beijing, CN (2019), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, DK (2018), Neues Museum, Nuremberg, DE (2017), Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE (2016), Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, JP (2014), The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, RU (2013), Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, KP (2009), Kyoto Cultural Museum, Kyoto, JP (2005), The Museum of Modern Art, Takasaki, JP (2003). In 2010, Yasuaki was the recipient of a United States-Japan Foundation Fellowship that included a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, as well as a grant from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Inc., New York. Onishi is based in the Osaka prefecture and is represented by ARTCOURT Gallery.