Nobuyuki Osaki

Nobuyuki Osaki (born 1975, Aichi Prefecture) is a Japanese contemporary artist whose practice originated in printmaking — he graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts in 2000 specialising in print — and has subsequently expanded into projection art, installation, and sculpture, while maintaining intermittent print exhibition participation. He is included in batch-06 on the basis of his selection for the 3rd PATinKyoto Print Art Triennale 2022.

Osaki's central technique — the so-called 'melting wallpaper' or 'dissolving image' work — is produced through painstaking organic animation: he films his own paintings as he allows them to physically dissolve in water or solvent, then selects the frame that most perfectly captures the artwork's life-cycle from completion to destruction. Images of dissolving faces, bodies, and patterns leave a strong impression on viewers; the slow consistent motion lets contours morph into tender shapes through which Osaki draws what he calls 'the uncertainty of reality.' The procedure is print-adjacent in the sense that it depends on the relationship between an original artwork and its mediated copy (the photograph or video frame extracted from the original's destruction), but it does not produce conventional printed editions.

His early career was anchored in the Kyoto print scene: at Kyoto Exhibition 2001 he received the Kyoto City Museum of Art Purchase Prize; he participated in 'The Power of Print' at Kyoto Prefectural Museum of Art (2004) and 'The Distance of Print' at Kyoto Arts Center (2007). Subsequent recognition includes the Fine Work Award at VOCA 2013 (Ueno Royal Museum), the Nagoya City Encouragement Award for Artists (2015), and the Sakuya Konohana Award from Osaka City (2017).

Osaki's mature exhibition history extends across Japan, Germany, USA, China, Taiwan, and Austria, beginning around 2001. From May 2021 he undertook a residency in Stuttgart, Germany, through a Japanese cultural ministry program. International venues have included Ludwig Forum Aachen and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His Aichi-prefecture exhibitions include 'Evaporating Colors' at masayoshi suzuki gallery, 'Aichi Art Forest' at Toyo Warehouse Tenant Building, and the 2019 solo 'Fading, Emerging and Extending Memories' at Galleria Finarte (July 13 – August 3, 2019). Public collections holding his work include the Machida City Museum of Print Art (Tokyo), Kyoto City Museum of Art, Kyoto City University of Arts, the Contemporary Print Center in Sannohe, and the Sekiguchi Private Museum of Art (Tokyo).

Osaki's PATinKyoto recommender frames the practice through the Wittgenstein-influenced theme of constellations and memory. The four works documented at PATinKyoto 2022 — 'Osaki 01-04' — are part of his ongoing investigation of dissolving image and physical/photographic deterioration. He is represented by Mikiko Sato Gallery (Hamburg), Yuka Tsuruno Gallery (Tokyo), and Gallery Hosokawa (Osaka). His positioning within the contemporary Japanese print scene is as a printmaker who has expanded into projection-based and dissolution-based work while retaining the original-to-copy critical concern central to print thinking.