Deconstructing the Gaze: 'Forgotten Eyes': Contemporary Surrealism and Cubist Visions Challenge Perceptions of Reality
2026-04-03 13:00 - 2026-05-30 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Johansson Projects presents Forgotten Eyes an exhibition of painting by Pablo Benzo and sculpture by Soojin Choi. Known for their emotional and undulating compositions, Benzo and Choi exploit the unstable boundaries between interior and exterior worlds. Their representations of life are warped, distended, burnished, and ultimately engaged in a reality that is elastic rather than fixed, shaped by memory, intuition, and shifting sensorial conditions.
Operating at the formal and conceptual nexus of Surrealism and Cubism, Benzo’s paintings reinterpret early 20th-century modernism for the contemporary moment. Grounded in conventions of still life and portraiture, his pastel-hued interiors are rendered as sites of mystery and multiplicity. In Benzo’s painted world flowers float as they wilt and the joints of furniture crease like flesh. Blending the quotidian with the otherworldly, Benzo eschews realism for a dream-like plane of being, offering a comfortable familiarity that always necessitates a double-take.
Choi’s ceramic sculptures similarly forgo conventional modes of representation in favor of more circuitous structures. Often figurative, her work treats the human body as a plastic form. Limbs and faces emerge from painted underglaze applied to hand-built planes of flattened clay that twist and twine around each other. Choi’s figures never engage in a moment of recognition, instead looking outward with ambivalent expressions. Their contorted anatomy foregrounds their alterity, evoking the complexity of human connection, individuation, and the construction of the other.
Forgotten Eyes will run Friday, April 3 to Saturday, May 30, 2026. An opening reception will be held Friday, April 3 from 5-8 pm.

“Dreamscapes” art by Daisuke Okamoto + Brenda Cibrian
2026-04-03 17:00 - 2026-05-31 17:00 | FM Gallery, 483 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Artist Statement: Daisuke Okamoto
Daisuke Okamoto’s work, “OKAINA IMAGE” is an elaborate and involved system of ink line drawings representing identity and transformation, exploring the cycle of life in the complex, biomorphic narratives of the organic.
Daisuke Okamoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, and currently works and resides in Los Angeles, California. Okamoto’s art is heavily influenced by science fiction and psychedelic culture. Given his intense passion for repetitive line drawing, Okamoto has been known to work over a year on a single piece.
Okamoto partnered with Microsoft on a Microsoft Surface Pro 8 and made a mural for the ad campaign in 2022. And he has also done collaborative projects with PBS KCET in Southern California.
Okamoto’s murals are in CA, TX, NV, OR, UT, MI, NY in the United States, Tokyo Japan, and Berlin Germany.
Artist statement: Brenda Cibrian
Through paintings and murals I seek to make art that uplifts and creates connection within ourselves and with the world around us. My work starts with a feeling first then subject matter, I then add in playful elements with a whimsical visual flair. I use surreal colors, combine imagery that is in and out of focus, with graphical, symbolic shapes to tie compositions together. I like to explore themes of identity, introspection, core memories and nostalgia. Nature, abstract shapes and people are recurring elements in my art and my influences come from my Mexican American upbringing in South Central as well as early 2000s internet culture.
April 3rd – May 30th, 2026
Receptions: First Friday, April 3rd, 5-10pm
Receptions: First Friday, May 1st, 5-10pm
Hours:
Saturdays 1-5pm
Every first Friday of the month 5-9pm
otherwise by appointment
