GOCA by Garde is pleased to announce The Supplemental Sublime, a solo exhibition by Oscar Oiwa on view at the gallery’s Chelsea space from September 3 through October 3, 2026. Spanning thirty years of the artist’s engagement with a single subject — food — the exhibition brings together new large-scale oil paintings completed in 2026 alongside canvases reaching back to 1996.
Since the eighteenth century, the “sublime” has named a sensation in which beauty and terror coexist. Oiwa finds it not in glaciers or storms but in the excess of food itself. Eating was once an act of tracing the land. The dazzling displays of Donut’s Shop, the rows of hanging meat in U.N. Meat Market, the endlessly replicated trays of Air Food, the sweet fields of Candy Farm stretching to the horizon. These images seduce the viewer, then quietly invert into anxieties over excess, addiction, and the planetary cost of what we eat. To lure us in, then pull the ground from under our feet. This is the painter’s signature gesture, and precisely his own words: “humor and anxiety coexist.”
Food, for Oiwa, is autobiography as much as subject. Born in São Paulo to Japanese immigrants, trained as an architect, resident of Tokyo for a decade and of New York since 2002, he has moved across the world carrying three food cultures in his body, watching human life through what people eat. From the donut shop to the Chinese restaurant, the wagashi shop, the New York breakfast: what once belonged to a place as cultural identity can now be had almost anywhere. Oiwa paints that difference as the position we currently occupy. The pleasure on the surface of these canvases is real; so is the unease underneath it.
The exhibition extends the gallery’s program of presenting artists who connect the sensibilities of Japan, greater Asia, and the Americas. Oiwa — a Brazilian-born painter of Japanese descent who built his career across three continents — embodies that circuit in a single practice. The Supplemental Sublime is his first solo exhibition at GOCA by Garde in New York.
From the Artist
“Food has always been an indispensable part of our daily lives. In the past, people around the world developed distinct food cultures based on what their local environment could provide. These traditions grew over centuries and became deeply connected to cultural identity. However, during the twentieth century, industrialization and globalization dramatically transformed the way food was produced, distributed, and consumed. In recent decades, globalization and the evolution of food supply chains have continued to change what and how we eat — whether in São Paulo, Tokyo, or New York City. For this exhibition, I have selected a group of works that explore the relationship between food and my own life journey, reflecting the different cultures, memories, and places that have shaped my experiences.” — Oscar Oiwa
About the Artist
Oscar Oiwa (b. 1965, São Paulo) was born to Japanese immigrants and received his B.F.A. from the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo in 1989, participating in the 21st São Paulo Biennial in 1991. He lived and worked in Tokyo from 1991 to 2001, with a year in London in 1995, and has been based in New York since 2002. He is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1997) and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2001). His work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; and the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, among others. Over three decades his practice has encompassed oil painting, large-scale panoramic drawing installations, and public art.