The geometrical dreams of Omar Rayo are awaking at Shinjuku Park Tower.

Done in simple acrylic colors, black and white, they rise off the flat canvas in more dimensions than our perception has room for. Folding and interweaving, they lead the eye in unexpected directions.

"Zen Wave" (1997) acrylic on canvas, by Omar Rayo

The show is called "The Odyssey of Equilibrium," and the Colombian artist has had an odyssey of his own on the way to becoming one of Latin America's most highly regarded artists.

Born in 1928, Rayo came of age just as Colombia fell into the decade of civil strife known as "La Violencia." He began his career as a magazine illustrator and cartoonist. He exhibited his works several times in the art-loving city of Bogota and other cities in Colombia, before leaving Colombia in 1954 to travel extensively around South America. He returned to Colombia in 1958 after peace was restored, and since then has lived, worked and exhibited in Mexico and New York as well as Bogota.

During the 1960s Rayo began developing his characteristic style with its emphasis on geometric line and the interaction between black, white and plain colors. Seen from a slight distance, the works seem to jump out of their flat medium, twisting and spreading in fantastic multidimensional effects. To compound the effect, the canvases are oriented 90 degrees from verticle, substituting a lozenge-shape painting for the expected Western square.

Up close the elaborate topology resolves into flat dots of paint.

"People think I use spray paint," the artist said at the opening of the show, "but I do not." The accusation is understandable, but inspection shows the colors shading and contrasting in ways impossible for mere spray guns.

"Narabruz XXI" (1982) acrylic on canvas, by Omar Rayo

In 1981 Rayo established the Rayo Museum of Latin American Drawing and Engraving in his home town of Roldanillo in rural Valle Department. Some questioned the wisdom of putting an art museum in such an out-of-the-way place, but under Rayo's care it won recognition and lured a stream of tourists, becoming an engine for development in the rural area.

Rayo has won numerous prizes over the years, and his work has been acquired by museums around the world, including New York's Metropolitan and MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago. In Japan the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and the the Museum of Contemporary Art in Nagaoka have acquired Rayo's work, but the present exhibition is the artist's first public show in Japan. As such it is a valuable opportunity to become acquainted with one of the leading figures in contemporary Latin American art.