In 2019, “Ohara’s Physicality, Tanaka’s Bionomics” was held at Creation Gallery G8. Though their fields of activitiy differ, Ohara and Tanaka have both forged careers as designers of the same generation, each deepening their mode of expression and methodology within their individual context. For this joint exhibition, they eack seek to decipher the other’s essence of design. By studying one another, they dissect their their respective targets from different approaches: one physical, the other bionomical. This exhibition shows the fruits and processes born from their investigations and Tanaka is in charge of PR materials.

Tanaka melts the garbage collected on the coast of Hayama and creates original handmade washi paper. Having Ohara’s drawing of the physical letters in the liquid state before the washi dries, so that the letters were fixed on the washi as an ambiguous form. Tanaka aimed to establish an ambiguous world that can be recognaized as a craft or a natural object while passing through graphic design ace. Ohara explores Tanaka’s bionomics by copying all pages of Tanaka’s books other works. By physically reading Tanaka’s production by drawing, he deciphers the frame of Tanaka’s works which narratively practices graphic design. The interaction between them in the production process was published on Twitter, and they aimed to re-context what was missed from flat design thinking by disclosing not only the production but also the discussion and doubts of the process. The visuals of Tanaka’s washi paper were used for the PR materials. Since the elements of letters are included in washi paper, he adopted a layout in which the minimum amount of information is stamped on the corners with gold tooling.