Kaz Oshiro's 4th Exhibit at Galerie Frank Elbaz Opens Tonight

The I-beam is part of the bone structure -or unconscious- of early capitalism, fundamentally shaping the modern landscape. At the same time, the I-beam symbolizes the vast fortunes, amassed by steel magnates and capitalists, and their obverse, the exploitation of millions of workers in the steel factories of Europe and the US.

It thus encapsulates the fundamental tension inherent in capitalism itself, the dialectics of creation and destruction, progress and oppression. This dialectical tension is also present in Kaz Oshiro's series of I-beams. At first glance, they seem like faithful sculptural reproductions of rusty beams, or even like real steel pillars, fragments of old buildings. On closer inspection, however, the sculptures turn out to be three-dimensional paintings, made from canvas, wood and acrylic.

Oshiro breaks down the barrier between painting and sculpture, or rather, highlights the uneasy and pervious limit between artistic forms, in general. His sculpted paintings, or painted sculptures, assemble fragments from the history of painting (abstract expressionism, minimalism, Pop Art), while fundamentally re-defining the latter's scope and possibilities. Oshiro's I-beam is a genuinely dialectical image, merging the past with the present, articulated around a series of fundamental tensions that point towards the future: painting vs. sculpture, individual craft vs. mass production, abstraction vs. figuration, tradition vs. avant-garde, the singular vs. the serial, illusion vs. reality.