Shigeru Onishi

Onishi was born in Takahashi City in Okayama prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Sixth High School of Takahashi city, focusing on mathematics and the sciences. In a photography magazine introducing Onishi's work, his friend, Tadao Ogura, stated that Onishi showed no interest in his studies, other than two or three subjects. While the students hurried towards the examination centers, he went in the opposite direction to go hiking. Ogura also mentioned that Onishi became interested in divination and created his own system. Onishi was so precocious that he often stumped his philosophy teacher and would stand at the lectern himself to explain difficult topics.[2]

Onishi entered Hokkaido University to study topology and graduated in 1953. He stayed in Hokkaido to continue his studies in mathematics until 1958 while he worked on his theoretical mathematical treatise, A Study of Meta-Infinite, which can also be considered his life work. Around this time, Onishi began photography to convey his mathematical theories in art. He also scribbled dozens of abstract sketches in red ink every day.[3]

According to Michel Tapie, Onishi was a Buddhist. After graduating from University, Onishi spent time at a Zen temple where he began to work with traditional Japanese sumi ink. His experimental photography and ink painting both started during his time in Hokkaido.[4]

In 1955, Onishi exhibited his first one-person show at Nabis Gallery in Tokyo. In the exhibition pamphlet, he explains that he "used multiple exposure, solarization, and other various techniques… There are some works for which I barely relied on the camera lens." The exhibition pamphlet also includes written contributions from Shuzo Takiguchi and Shigene Kanamaru. At the time, his experimental photographs shocked viewers. Tatsuo Fukushima, a prominent photography critic, wrote:

Shigeru Onishi is one of those photographers whose work boldly strikes me with the unease and anguish of an individual living through our times. While his work aggressively takes a stand against all that harms and injures us, I also felt it issues a warning to our tamed souls, which, when confronted with such harmful things, tend to try and proceed by forgetting, evading, deceiving. His photographs shock our numbed souls and teach them to hate that which is hateful. The force they display – the opposite of what we see in the more accommodating salons – could not be more important for this society.[5]

In March 1957, Takemiya Gallery in Tokyo held Onishi's second one-person show. It was titled The Second Shigeru Onishi Photography Exhibition and organized by Takiguchi. In an essay for this show, Onishi wrote that the goal of his photography was "to know the conditions of the subject's formation founded on a desire to pursue such metamathematical propositions such as the 'possibility of existence' and 'the possibility of arbitrary work'”[6] He was deeply committed to his pursuit of photography through the lens of mathematics.

In 1956, his works were presented in a traveling exhibition organized by Sankei Camera held at the Nihonbashi Takashimaya department store in Tokyo, titled The First International Subjective Photography Exhibition. The show focused on the Subjektive Fotografie movement initiated by the German photographer Otto Steinert and included Japanese artists like Onishi. One year after the exhibition, Onishi's photographs were introduced in a special feature for Subjectivist photographers with other major artists in the movement.[7]

In March 1958, Onishi participated in the Japanese Subjective Photography exhibition at the Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo, organized by the Japan Subjective Photography League, formed two years earlier.

At this point in his career, Onishi shifted his artistic focus because he felt the mathematical propositions fundamental to him were beyond the scope of photography. He continued his theoretical mathematical treatise, but his artistic production shifted to large-scale abstract ink paintings.

Around this time, he became acquaintances with the French critic Michel Tapie who was involved with the Gutai group. Onishi participated in several shows that the Gutai group hosted through this relationship. In 1957, Contemporary World Art, an international exhibition curated by Tapie, featured Onishi's abstract ink paintings. The show focused on Art Informel and was first exhibited at the Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo, and later at the Daimaru Department Store in Osaka. In 1958, he participated in the Osaka International Festival—The International Art of a New Era: Informel and Gutai, first exhibited in Osaka and later toured to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo, and Kyoto. In 1959, he appeared in the Fifteen Japanese Contemporary Artists Recommended by Tapie at Gendai Gallery in Tokyo.

After meeting Tapie, Onishi's works made their first appearance in an exhibition outside Japan in late 1959. The Galerie Stadler in Paris feated his work in an exhibition titled METAMORPHISMES. Rodolphe Stadler opened the gallery in October 1955 and hired Tapie as an artistic advisor.[8]

In May to June 1959, Onishi's work was presented at the exhibition Arte Nuova: Esposizione Internazionale di Pittura e Scultura (“New Art: International Exhition of Painting and Scultpure”) at the Palazzo Graneri in Turin, Italy.

In March 1961, he was included in an exhibition titled Continuité et avant-garde au Japon (“Continuity and the avant-garde in Japan”). The show was held at the now-closed International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, which Tapie cofounded.

Although Onishi was featured in several shows with the Gutai group and had many connections to Tapie, it appears that he was never a full member of the Gutai group.

In April 1960, he had a solo exhibition at Gendai Gallery in Tokyo. This show focusing on his calligraphic works would be his last exhibition in Japan for 20 years. A review by the art critic, Yusuke Nakahara, titled “Intelligent compositions: Shigeru Onishi’s explorations of the possibilities of ink," appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. In it, Nakahara differentiates Onishi's calligraphic work from other typical Japanese calligraphic work. Nakahara states:

Onishi's works are expressed in ink, but they create a disparate world from modernist calligraphy. This departure is probably because the artist is deeply familiar with the limitations and possibilities of ink as a material. The world he creates results from his devotion to his singular vision. Onishi’s uniqueness comes from his confluent spatial expression influenced by the streaking subtly shaded lines of the sumi ink. The composition is purified and intellectual. Compared to this, his inner dramatic power is relegated to the background.[9]

In 1961, a large-format catalog of Onishi's artworks was published by Edizioni d’Arte Fratelli Pozzo in Turin, entitled Onishi (Baroques Ensemblistes 5). And in March of the same year, he is included in an exhibition at the International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, titled Continuité et avant-garde au Japon (“Continuity and the avant-garde in Japan”).

In 1969, the International Center of Aesthetic Research, founded by Tapié, published Onishi's first monograph, titled A Study of Meta-Infinite: Logic of Continuum (1). It is noteworthy because Onishi's theoretical treatise fills the pages of the monograph. The following year, a publisher in Cologne published his collected theoretical writings, Super Function Theory.

Although Onishi's abstract ink paintings were widely exhibited and published from the 1950s to the 1970s throughout Europe, he did not keep the company of international art circles. In Europe, his abstract calligraphic works were well received, but his earlier photographic works were largely ignored.

Over the years, critics tried to tie Onishi to many artistic movements, but Onishi never associated himself with any specific movement. He did not join Gutai though heavily involved with Tapie, and he shifted away from photography, so he was never fully engaged in the subjective photography movement. Onishi stayed in Okayama and continued to work on his primary endeavor, his mathematical research, until his passing in 1994.

From the late 70s into the 90s, his calligraphic works and In Search for the Meta-Infinite were included in group shows at the Nara Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama Cultural Center, and the National Museum of Art, Osaka.

In an introductory essay Tapie wrote for A Study of the Meta-Infinite, Tapie describes a personal episode when he met Onishi for Osaka's International Sky Festival in 1960. When Onishi arrived in Osaka, he was so excited to see Tapie and explain his new mathematical discoveries that the translator couldn't keep up with his highly specialized vocabulary borrowed from French, English, and German. Tapie recalls Onishi's passion capitated him.[4]

Thanks to the rediscovery of his archive, he work is once again garnering attention. From 2019 to 2020, MoMA in New York City featured his work in the exhibition Collection 1940s–1970s. In 2021, his solo exhibition traveled to Foam photography museum in Amsterdam and then to bombas Gens Centre d’Art in 2022.