john david o’brien
“AO scultura-2 (tera)”
23 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 15" (60 x 57 x 38 cm.)
Wood, steel, aluminum, paint, dye
Exploring the core concerns within John O’Brien’s practice of the relationships between recognizable and abstract elements and the nature of memory in time, the Accidental Orientalist ensemble is based on slides of Japan which were taken by his father in the mid 1950's before the artist was born there. He deploys the misunderstanding of orientalism (a mis-perception of the east on the part of the west) as away of entering into a past, a foreign land where he was both born and lived for 3 years and a stylistic continuum that is both his and not his.
John's art reflects his investigations and interest in how abstraction relates to those like him (now called adult third culture kids) who while being from one culture are born into another and have lived outside of their birth culture a significant part of their developmental life. O’Brien was born to American parents in Japan where he lived for 3 years and then moved to Italy between the ages of 13 and 28 before returning to the US. He currently oscillates between Los Angeles California and Umbria, Italy