The straightforward nature and quotidian materials of Nobutaka Aozaki’s practice were illustrated by the bluntly descriptive title of his most recent show, “Soda • Chips • Lottery • Cards.” If that sounds like a sign in the window of the nearest corner store, well, it only needs to be added that, yes, his art deals, in its witty and tender way, with the kinds of things you’d find in a bodega—but only after those items have been used and discarded.
Let’s unpack that title word by word. Soda would refer to Aozaki’s ongoing “Street Cans” series, 2014–. To make these pieces, he takes the crushed aluminum cans littering New York and does his best to, as it were, uncrush them, meticulously teasing apart the flattened bits and restoring something approximating the object’s original cylindrical form. They’re not all pop cans, either—you’ll find containers for beer, iced tea, energy drinks, and so on in the mix. The works’ individual titles include the libation’s brand name and, most often, the place where the can was found. The range of sites suggests that Aozaki travels all over the five boroughs in search of his materials, including Nineteenth Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn; Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, Queens; and SoHo in Manhattan. What the resulting reconstructions demonstrate, not surprisingly, is time’s unidirectionality: The pathetically distressed tins are still ruins that can only allude to their pristine state at the point of purchase. What’s more unexpected is that in this battered form they are poignant, sculpturally striking, and strangely human, almost heroic in their assisted defiance of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Chips refers to another series, “Micro Chip Bags,” 2024–, but one made through obliteration rather than reconstruction. For these works, Aozaki collects empty chip bags (again, street detritus) and zaps them in a microwave oven, curdling them into tiny, brilliantly colorful abstract sculptures, almost like diminutive John Chamberlains. Lottery refers to “Lottery Ticket Paintings,” 2020–, for which Aozaki covers the namesake items with black paint to reveal only the places where the original buyer scratched them off to disclose the underlying numbers—losing ones, of course. Unlike that of “Street Cans” and “Micro Chip Bags,” the pathos of this series does not find a formal correlative in the discarded, but links to that tiny spark of hope—and the equal and opposite sense of letdown—embodied by each ticket. Finally, Cards pertains to Royal Flush, 2025, consisting of playing cards found here and there. Aozaki assembled them to create four instances of the most valuable hand in poker, ten through ace of the same suit, albeit from different decks—winners assembled, but only symbolically, from what’s been lost.
Aozaki has much in common with Yuji Agematsu, another Japanese-born New York artist, but one who is a generation older. They share a commitment to the minuscule and possess an attentive eye for the junk of city streets. Maybe it takes an immigrant’s gaze to discern the specialness of such mundane sights. The differences between the artists are also significant: For instance, Agematsu’s sculptures are made from all kinds of stuff, much of it unrecognizable, while Aozaki’s work is organized according to specific categories. The elder artist’s output emphasizes aesthetic and formal considerations, whereas the younger one’s is more conceptual in nature. But both of them teach that what we normally overlook (when we don’t disdain it as unsightly trash) can be appreciated for its beauty and for what it says about this life.
