Shinji Ohmaki is an interdisciplinary artist born in Gifu Prefecture, Japan in 1971. Ohmaki is internationally renowned for his large scale site-specific installations that play with viewers’ notions of space and time, comprehensions of interior and exterior, and perceptions of the sublime, through the use and repetition of simple materials. In his work he seeks to render ephemeral moments and invisible phenomenon into tactile or haptic installations. In these installations audience interaction, through the physical movement around or bodily engagement with the work, shifts viewers’ perceptions on weight, time, or their body in space.

In his work ‘Liminal Air-Black Weight’ a dense black rectangular prism comprised of nylon string descends from the ceiling, stopping a couple meters from the floor. Viewers can walk inside this immersive installation in which Ohmaki gives darkness corporeal form, shifting their perceptions of weight, pressure and space. In his ‘Liminal Air Space-Time Series’, in which a suspended sheer fabric undulates in airflow created by hidden fans and the gallery environment, Ohmaki visualizes air; distorting viewers’ senses of gravity and time.

Ohmaki graduated with a Bachelor of Arts specialising in sculpture from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1995, and gained a Masters in 2007. He has held numerous solo exhibitions across multiple art venues including Mito Art Museum, Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo Wonder Site, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, and The Hakone Open-Air Museum. His work has been included in the Yokohama Triennale in 2008, and the Asia Pacific Triennale in 2009. He currently lives and works in Tokyo.

The White Rabbit Collection is one of the world’s most extensive and significant collections of contemporary art from China. With a focus on works created since the year 2000, the Collection contains almost 3,000 works by over 750 artists and continues to expand. Note that when you click on the link below you will be forwarded to the White Rabbit Collection website.

Explore the work of Shinji Ohmaki in the collection database