Tam Ochiai: Tapetum Lucidum

Tapetum Lucidum presents three bodies of work by artist Tam Ochiai, spanning his migration to New York in 1990 to the present. From his early shopping bag works of the 1990s to the outsized figure paintings of the 2000s to, most recently, the ashtray sculptures of the 2010s, the works assembled here chart Ochiai’s ongoing investigation of mark-making, appropriation, and the genre of painting.

A reflective tissue layer in the retina of certain animals, the tapetum lucidum is Ochiai’s conceit for his own reflections on the various artistic ventures of his life. The tapetum acts like a mirror, bouncing visible light that passes through the retina back to the photoreceptor cells, allowing for enhanced vision in the dark. It is with the clarity of such superhuman eyesight (humans, unlike cats, do not have the tapetum) that Ochiai presents his decades-long experiment in image-making.