Makito Okada, in his solo show at the imura art gallery, Kyoto, is concerned with rehabilitating the 18th- and 19th-century preoccupation with the Romantic aesthetic concept of the sublime. Instead of man being seen as in harmony with the natural world, obtaining aesthetic delight from it, the sublime posited man in awe of nature, finding it threatening his existence. Nature, it appeared, could outrage the imagination and defy understanding.
This is most visibly seen in "A lighthouse keeper," where a man stands in a rowboat and looks off into the billowing and monstrous gray of the sea and sky, without a horizon. The scene appears to stupefy the lighthouse keeper.
The man-made is also ominous. In "I'll Protect You," a soaring lighthouse is ostensibly the protector but it dwarfs the tiny figure in the middle ground making his existence seem insignificant. The stormy swathes of ultramarine paint laid down over graphite plays up the turbulence and suggests a mental state of solitude and agitation.