Tune In – In Tune

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 12, 6-8 pm at Open Studio.

Tune In – In Tune: Screenprints by Zenji Funabashi and Shogo Okada is a collaborative exhibition that brings together new screenprints by contemporary artist Shogo Okada and screenprints collected for the Open Studio archive by established illustrator and visual artist Zenji Funabashi (1942–2023). Both artists embrace predominantly analogue techniques, expressed through a shared cut-out aesthetic that places primary focus on an intuitive and playful exploration of form, composition, and colour. Finding connection in artistic approach and design sensibility, this exhibition draws a line between two artists practising decades apart but in tune with each other.

Zenji Funabashi was born in Kawasaki, Japan. The vibrant works presented in this exhibition are ‘studio proofs’ of prints created in 1980 at Open Studio, while he lived in Toronto and worked as a graphic designer. Funabashi’s screenprints are inventive and timeless, showcasing a keen eye for the distillation of design and a harmonious use of colour. The cut-out process and interplay of positive and negative space are essential to his work, from his prints to the gently interlocking wooden sculptures he also began creating during this time. A breezy sense of humour, warmth, and immediacy radiates throughout Funabashi’s creative practice, reflective of his personal description of his work as employing “a cutter, paper, my brain and my heart.”

Shogo Okada’s contemporary practice draws parallels between approaches to music and art-making: the creation of beats as a foundation, layering of motifs, and experimenting with shapes and flow to create a final composition. For his new prints, he looks to the natural world, finding inspiration in the intrinsic logic and order of organic forms, from the leaves of a pothos to the seeds of a kiwi fruit. Channelled through Okada’s visual editing process and using a hybrid of analogue and digital tools, his subjects are reworked and abstracted through intuitive subtraction, resulting in rhythmic and fresh compositions that retain an essence of familiarity while leaving room for personal interpretation.

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Zenji Funabashi (b. 1942, Kawasaki, Japan) was an artist, designer, and illustrator. He graduated from the Design Department of Tama Art University in 1965 and received the Special Selection of the Japan Advertising Artists Association in 1968. He came to Toronto in 1970 and worked for Kramer Design Associates and Phantasmagoria design studio. During his time in Toronto, Funabashi used the facilities at Open Studio to create his own screenprinted artworks. He moved to San Francisco in 1977 to work at Korty Films Inc., producing animation features, and returned to Japan in 1980.

In later years, Funabashi’s practice expanded into environmental design and public art. He created sculptural works for locations including Izumi Garden Place, Tokyo; Seijo Gakuen Hospital, Tokyo; the National Center for Child Health and Development, Tokyo; and a subway mural at Komagome Station, Tokyo. Solo exhibitions of Funabashi’s work have been held in Tokyo, Toronto, Ottawa, and Frankfurt. He illustrated the book column in the Sunday edition of the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, created the cover artwork for Hokuren’s Green magazine, and taught at the Aoyama School of Illustration for many years. Zenji Funabashi was based in Kamakura, outside of Tokyo, until his passing in December 2023.

Born in Osaka, Japan, Shogo Okada is an artist based in Montreal. His work explores the fields of both visual arts and music production. Okada’s screenprints pair exceptional precision with a warm and playful character by combining traditional printing processes with up-to-date technologies. Through his visual art practice, Okada is interested in developing and recomposing his chosen motifs in a distilled and abstract manner to capture the core nature of his subjects. He has exhibited at numerous exhibitions and fairs in Canada and Japan, including Ubisoft, Montreal; Martha Street Studio, Winnipeg; Will Kucey Gallery, Toronto; and Open Studio, Toronto. His work is included in many private, public, and corporate collections, including the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), Capital One USA, National Bank of Canada, and BMO Canada.

Thank you to Catherine Funabashi for her support in making this exhibition possible.

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Read a current article in artoronto.ca about the exhibition here.