Kaz Oshiro

Kaz Oshiro is a Japanese-American contemporary artist born in 1967 in Okinawa, Japan. Currently based in Los Angeles, California, Oshiro is renowned for his innovative practice that blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture. His work explores dichotomies such as abstraction/figuration, reality/illusion, and painting/sculpture, often referencing artistic movements like Pop Art, Minimalism, and Abstract Expressionism. Oshiro creates hyperrealistic, trompe l’oeil sculptures of everyday objects—such as kitchen cabinets, trash bins, guitar amplifiers, and steel beams—using traditional painting materials like acrylic, Bondo, and stretched canvas. These meticulously crafted pieces challenge viewers’ perceptions, appearing as functional objects at first glance but revealing their nature as paintings upon closer inspection.

Oshiro moved to Los Angeles after high school and earned both his Bachelor of Arts (1998) and Master of Fine Arts (2002) from California State University, Los Angeles. Influenced by his early encounters with photorealist paintings and his immersion in American and Japanese pop culture, Oshiro developed a practice that reinterprets the readymade and still-life traditions. His works are celebrated for their technical precision and conceptual depth, engaging with themes of consumer culture, artistic representation, and the history of painting. Oshiro’s art has been exhibited globally in prestigious institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Walker Art Center, and the Hammer Museum, and is held in notable collections such as LACMA, the Rubell Museum, and the Zabludowicz Collection. He is represented by galleries including Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Santa Monica, Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris, and MAKI Gallery in Tokyo.