Resonant Forms: The Rhythms of Zenji Funabashi and Shogo Okada
At Open Studio this fall Tune In – In Tune brings two artists into tender dialogue across time: Zenji Funabashi (1942–2023), an illustrator and designer who’s inventive screenprints of the 1980s captured the spirit of graphic experimentation, and Shogo Okada, a Montreal-based artist whose contemporary works resonate with that same rhythmic precision and intuitive play. Though separated by generations, both share a deep atonement to process, to the tactile rhythm of cutting, layering, and composing, as well as a belief that form, like sound, carries its own kind of music.
The title Tune In – In Tune gestures to the double act of listening and responding, of finding one’s rhythm within another’s. It suggests a form of creative resonance: Okada tuning into the traces of Funabashi’s sensibility, and Funabashi’s archive, in turn, vibrating with renewed life through this contemporary encounter. Together, their works compose a visual duet grounded in the analogue language of screen-printing yet alive with improvisation and pulse.
Installation view of Tune In – In Tune: Screenprints by Zenji Funabashi and Shogo Okada at Open Studio
Funabashi’s screen-prints, produced in 1980 during his years in Toronto, reveal an artist fluent in the distilled clarity of design and the warmth of intuition. Working with cut paper, he explored how shapes could interlock, overlap, or dissolve into one another, creating a choreography of positive and negative space. His “studio proofs,” presented here from the Open Studio archive, are as fresh and inventive as when they were made—bright, graphic meditations that feel at once spontaneous and precise. Funabashi approached his materials with disarming simplicity: “a cutter, paper, my brain and my heart.” Within that modest declaration lies the spirit of his work, curiosity without ornament, humour without irony, design without rigidity.
During his time in Toronto, Funabashi became part of a vibrant community of artists and designers drawn to Open Studio’s collaborative ethos. His engagement with printmaking soon extended beyond the page to wooden sculptures that echoed the rhythm and geometry of his prints. After returning to Japan, his practice expanded further into environmental and public art, from sculptural installations in Tokyo’s urban centers to murals and architectural collaborations. Across media, his work radiated a sense of balance and human connection, a belief that art, in any form, should harmonize with its surroundings and the people who encounter it.
Zenji Funabashi, detail: Sea Birds, 1980, screenprint, OS Proof, 1980, 49/50, 15.75 x 15.75 inches
If Funabashi’s work carries the melodic clarity of a composed score, Okada’s prints introduce the syncopation of improvisation. Born in Osaka and now based in Montreal, Okada moves fluidly between visual art and music production, two disciplines that inform one another in both method and mood. For him, the act of printing parallels to composing a rhythm, layering motifs, then listening for the composition resolving into harmony. Each print begins with a structure and builds outward through iterative experimentation. The result is a visual rhythm that feels at once ordered and free flowing.
In his new body of work for Tune In – In Tune, Okada turns his gaze to the natural world: to the internal geometry of leaves, seeds, and petals; to the repetitions and variations that govern organic growth. Through a process that fuses analogue screen-printing with digital refinement, he abstracts these motifs until they hover between the recognizable and the imagined. His pared-down forms, guided by intuitive subtraction, evoke a sense of movement. Colours vibrate softly against one another, inviting the eye to move, pause, and return, much like the rhythms of breath or sound.
Shogo Okada, Pothos (Terracotta), 2025, screenprint, edition of 12 + 2AP, 9 x 9 inches
Together, the works of Funabashi and Okada create a continuum of sensibility—an ongoing conversation between craft and intuition. Both artists work through processes of distillation, seeking clarity not through control but through their means of attentiveness. Their screenprints are acts of listening: to material, to rhythm, and to the quiet intelligence of the hand at work.
Tune In – In Tune is less about the distance between two artists than the space they share—the frequency at which their ideas overlap. It reminds us that dialogue need not be spoken to be heard; that across time, form can remain in conversation with itself. Through their prints, Funabashi and Okada offer a meditation on what it means to be in tune: with one’s tools, with one’s materials, and with the quiet rhythms that connect artists and viewers across generations.
Yehyun Lee
Images are courtesy of Open Studio
*Exhibition information: Tune In – In Tune, screenprints by Zenji Funabashi and Shogo Okada, September – November 22, 2025, Open Studio, Main Gallery, 401 Richmond St West, Suite 104. Gallery hours: Tuesday – Friday 11am – 5pm, Saturday 12 – 5pm.