The first thing you’ll notice about Edwin Ushiro’s vibrant paintings is the way he delicately controls light, color, and transparency. To achieve this unique effect, the Culver City-based artist sandwiches painted transfer paper between sheets of vinyl, that he also paints over afterwards. “Edwin Ushiro’s work resonates with the echoes of his boyhood in the ‘slow town’ of Wailuku on the Hawaiian island of Maui,” says Roq la Rue’s Amanda Erlandson. “While exploring the narrative tradition of ‘talk story’ native to the islands, he interweaves the uncanny obake tales of his Japanese heritage.” Collected here are Ushiro’s most recent works, which he is currently showing at Seattle’s Roq La Rue gallery through October 10, 2010.
