Yakko

This edition represents a new and important development in Toru Otani's practice. Rather than using found papers and other materials, he himself screen-printed a black-and-white image of shunga (an erotic genre of ukiyo-e print) in different arrangements on each of the twelve sheets in the series. These were then expanded into three dimensions through the art of origami, following the classic model of the “yakko”—a popular term for addressing a man in the Edo period.

Although the form is unprecedented in the artist's work, we nevertheless find the same serial logic, the same imaginative elaboration and formal variations based on given motifs. The tension between the arbitrariness of the folds and the randomness of the printed motifs echoes the way Otani has always exploited the constraints and specificities of the surfaces on which he draws or paints.

Finally, Yakko develops a subtle game of concealment and revelation. The erotic dimension of the scene appears only by surprise, as fragments of bodies escape from the folds of the origami/clothing, as in an experimental striptease session.