Oliver Gosling  

Like a mirage, Oliver Gosling's abstract paintings resemble places we might have seen. And like a mirage his works vibrate with light, reflected off the metallic oxides with which he paints. Gosling also uses the colors of the earth -- rich yellow ochre -- actual powdered pigments of rock in his art to give his work a contrasting weight and substance.

Gallery MMG, situated a block behind the American Club, is exhibiting over 30 of his paintings on canvas and charcoal drawings on paper for the next few weeks. Gosling, a British artist and sometime resident of Tokyo, is perhaps better known to Tokyo Q readers as the previous art writer for this site. Trained at the Royal College of Art, Gosling has exhibited in Europe and Britain and has work in a number of corporate and private collections.

His exhibition at Gallery MMG captures some of the fluency of the calligraphic brushstroke he absorbed while in Japan and combines this with a long British landscape tradition that embraces the weight of Constable and lightness of Turner.

However, his works are spared down symbols of place and offer multiple readings: They may suggest elements and a spirit of the land, but they can also be understood purely in terms of texture, rhythm and movement. The shapes he creates take on a narrative and evoke relationships and tensions. Somewhere between heaven and earth, in a landscape of the soul, you will locate the paintings of Oliver Gosling.

Gallery MMG Higashi-Azabu 1-5-8 (15 min Kamiyacho) Tel: 03 3586.7666 open 11:00-18:00 (closed Sundays) December 5 - 22