Tower 49 Gallery presents OSCARSCAPE by Brazilian-American artist Oscar OIWA (ACC 2001). The exhibition, which features sixteen oil paintings and a monumental drawing inspired by the Olympics, will remain open and free to the public through May 2025.

When he became an artist he retained that sense of freedom and adventure, composing many of his works from a bird’s eye view. His paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations unfold fantastical visions grounded in the real world: vaporous, amoeba-shaped clouds floating above a nighttime cityscape; shimmering currents of a violet river churning beneath an impossibly long, narrow bridge; swirls of intense color that could be the surface of a pond or disruptions in the stratosphere; dense green forests bursting with particles of light. Although inspired by his travels around the world, these scenes, the artist writes, are “not the real physical world but the result of my experience living in a certain place.” He terms Oscarscapes: “things I saw not with my eyes but my soul.”

In the East Lobby, Oiwa presents “Zeus the God of Olympia,” a wall-spanning ink drawing whose three sections depict the host cities of the modern Olympics: Rio de Janeiro in his native Brazil (2016); Tokyo, Japan (2020); and Paris, France (2024), all presided over by an enormous head of Zeus in the central (Tokyo) panel. The imagery includes well-known landmarks of each city, as well as their often claustrophobic infrastructure and details such as a police boat and an armoured car, which bring home the implicit risks that the games incur within the current political climate. Originally made for an exhibition at Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris to promote the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, the three sections are designed to be viewed horizontally or vertically.

Reflecting on his artistic roots and the technological advances that have transformed the world, he recalls: “One day, sitting in my studio chair, I was thinking about my past, my childhood memories, and my notion of the world from my fourth-floor apartment window. Googling, I found my childhood apartment; the building is still there! In my childhood, I looked at the world from my window. Now, I can see the same window from the world, and in my imagination, the little boy standing behind it.” 

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