Maya Onoda: Kaleidoscope / Magnan Metz Gallery NYC

Kaleidoscope is Japanese artist Maya Onoda’s third solo exhibition with Magnan Metz Gallery. Maya Onoda is known for her intricate paper cutouts and installations. Maya Onoda was born in Japan and received her BFA from California State University-Fullerton and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. This video provides you with an exhibition walkthrough during the opening reception.

Maya Onoda: Kaleidoscope at Magnan Metz Gallery, New York. Opening reception, October 18, 2012. Video: Shimon Azulay.

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More info from the press release:

Known for her intricate paper cutouts and delicate installations, Onoda refers back to this medium to explore the transformation of everyday life into art.

Every time you turn the tube, a kaleidoscope gives you a different view. The colored pieces of paper found inside, never changing in their form, can create endless designs of varying colors and shapes. This is determined by the reflection of those pieces of paper in the interior mirror. Onoda finds this concept of transformation very similar to a human’s subjectivity. All things appear differently depending on how we are looking at them on a particular day, in a particular place, at a particular time.

Inspired by the coffee she drinks each morning, Onoda displays their shoji paper, intertwined and stained with stale coffee (using filters), in the primary installation piece aptly titled, Kaleidoscope. Instead of finding frustration in the concept of a spilled drink on one’s clothing or table, Onoda seeks to find beauty and appreciation. All things, even the most mundane, have the potential to be great art. Kaleidoscope displays Onoda’s trademark cutout design. The cutouts of the suspended work ultimately become the negative space of the “drawing” while the actual pieces of cut paper are saved and used in other works, becoming the positive space. In consequence, the second work turns the first one into the negative: the positive and negative are one and indivisible.

Counterbalancing each other, one work leads to another. The repetition of this process becomes an infinite loop. At the same time, transformation is always happening within this repetition by changing one’s perspective. Just like a kaleidoscope, Onoda’s work tells a different story with every transformation, and it becomes “the never ending story.”

Maya Onoda was born in Japan and received her BFA from California State University-Fullerton and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.  She was awarded the 2006 MFA Grant Award from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Most recently, Onoda exhibited at Mad L Gallery in Taiwan as well as the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor, Staten Island, NY. She has participated in group shows including The Fashion District Arts Festival, New York, NY and Garbage Picker, The Contemporary Artist as Chiffonier(e) curated by Amy Brandt.

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