SPECULA #8
2021, UV inkjet print (StareReap 2.5) on PVC board with aluminum mounting, 88.8 x 88.8cm（image）/ 100.8 x 100.8 x 5cm（88.8 x 88.8cm（image）/ 100.8 x 100.8 x 5framed）

Enrico Isamu Oyama’s artistic practice draws on the street art culture of 1970s and 1980s New York that influenced him from an early age. He dissects the aerosol writing (“graffiti”) that adorns urban subways and walls, adding and recompositing the flowing lines to manifest a remarkably original mode of abstract expression he has dubbed the “Quick Turn Structure.” These motifs have been performed on a diverse range of media⁠—from vast concrete walls to canvas and small pieces of paper—and materials from aerosol to acrylics. RICOH’s StareReap printing technology can now join this list, with the debut of Oyama’s first fully digital series, SPECULA.

“My new series, SPECULA, is also my first incursion into the digital. The series consists of 18 intricate visual contemplations on abstract Quick Turn Structure (QTS) motifs that have been digitally replicated, inverted, overlayed, and interlinked on a computer, then output using RICOH’s StareReap printing technology to richly textural monochrome effect. As the QTS breathe life into the depths, the outcome, in essence, is a whole new mode of expression. Systematically sinuous lines invite the viewer to draw open-ended associations—a phenomenon one sees in the rhythmic patterns of wallpaper, tile mosaics, fractals, paisleys, arabesques, mandalas, and kaleidoscopes. Speculum means “mirror” in Latin. Its plural, specula, suggests the multitude shards of a shattered mirror. One can imagine glimpsing the diffuse reflections of a religious icon in these specular fragments, evocative perhaps of Christian iconography. I did not, however, have any specific cultural codes in mind when creating the work in this series. The sole principle governing the QTS universe is an inherent cycling between disassembly and reconstitution. QTS dismantles the stylized lettering found in the visual language of aerosol writing, distilling script down to disparate flowing lines that can then be reassembled as abstract forms. When this recombinant amplitude is further enhanced through the power of technology, the contours of QTS can be pushed to their breaking point, to unleash a complex congeries of even finer lines that expand and fill the visual field. The result is SPECULA.”