Year: 2020
Medium: acrylic on canvas, framed
Dimensions: 18.2 x 24.9 cm (7 1/8 x 9 3/4 in.)
Acquired from Blum & Poe, 2022
The “Zero Thumbnail” series is considered to be one of Okazaki’s representative works. Each work is painted on a size 0 canvas, the smallest standard size. The series is also characterized by neat placement in wooden frames with parts of the length missing on all four sides. The content of the works takes inspiration from various episodes related to historical paintings. It is also interesting how people interpret art in their way, with the title acting as a starting point for the workings of their imagination. The title of this work starts with the Portuguese phrase “Encontro das águas,” which means “Meeting of waters.” It refers to the famous confluence of rivers in Brazil, known as a strange landscape where two distinct streams with different characteristics, black and brown, flow alongside one another in a single river for some time. The latter part of the title is likely taken from “Landscape with a Man scooping Water from a Stream” by Nicolas Poussin, a key painter of the French Baroque period. In this painting, a young man in white and an older man in blue are depicted on either side of a single stream. The young man stretches his powerful arms to the water to scoop some up, while the old man appears to cast a somewhat weary gaze at the water’s surface with his legs extended out in front of him. It would be worthwhile to contemplate what exactly Okazaki was trying to abstract in this small work by contrasting the two figures of the young and old men with the non-intersecting currents of the rivers in Brazil.
