Jô Oda
Japan
Untitled / Forma viva 1964
steel plates / 460 x 610 x 460 cm / Čečovje Neighbourhood, Ravne
Oda’s container composition consists of box-like elements, whose picturesque unsettledness enters into an active dialogue with the rigid square forms of the nearby apartment blocks. The dynamic structure of the statue is reinforced by a myriad of details, which complement – seemingly at random, but in fact in a most thoughtful manner – the ascending serpentine stack of abstract cubist forms, which, only at the top, opens out into an expressively cracked rod texture that used to form an incision into the blue skies above the open green area, in front of which the sculpture was installed years ago.
Jô Oda was born in 1936 in Tokyo, Japan. He graduated in sculpture at the Tokyo Academy in 1960. The same year, he received the young artist award at the exhibition of the Shinesisaku Kyokai art association at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, and the following year their first prize. He completed his postgraduate studies at the Tokyo Academy in 1962. He held his first major solo exhibition in 1963 at the Surugadai gallery in Tokyo. He taught at the Tama Art University and the Tôhoku Institute of Technology. He was a member of the committee of the Japan Artists Association, Inc. His work has been exhibited all over the world: in Poland (1966), Czechoslovakia (1967); in 1967/68, he was the recipient of the state scholarship in Italy. In the following years, he exhibited in Mexico, Argentina (1972), Hungary (1973), Brazil (1983), Italy; in 1995, he held a solo show in New Zealand. In 2002, he received the Emperor’s national award, the Medal of Purple Ribbon. He died in 2004 in Tokyo.
