City

Figuration in Matter

Toronto

ODA, Yasuo（小田康夫）

Beyond the City

I use the city as my subject, but my purpose is not simply to represent urban scenery. I seek to make the familiar world unfamiliar, transforming recognizable reality into something that challenges ordinary perception. Through the city, I explore remembered images, overlapping times, layered places, and the subtle twisting of reality.

I begin with photographs because they establish a direct connection to the visible world. For each city, I use photographs taken in that same location, selecting fragments of architecture, streets, and urban spaces. Through digital collage, multiple layers, transparency, and blending, I overlap different viewpoints and moments in time, dissolving conventional boundaries of space and reorganizing their relationships. The original elements remain rooted in reality, but their transformed relationships create a world that is recognizable yet impossible within ordinary physical experience.