Okuda biography
Born Oscar San Miguel Erice in Santander, Pain on November 19, 1980, Okuda is a painter and sculptor internationaly known for his distinctive style.
Okuda’s work can be classified as pop surrealism with a clear essence of street art or urban art. His artwork is composed of geometric prints and multicolored ephymeral architectures that help blend with grey bodies and organic forms. These pieces of artwork often raise contradictions about existentialism, the universe, the infinite, the meaning of life, and the false freedom of capitalism. They help ignite conversations about the clear conflict between modernity and our roots.
Okuda began his career as a street artist by painting in old factories and lost railways in 1996. Since 1997 his works have been recognized on roads and the factories in Santander. By 2009, his work hit a major point in his career. He had an opportunity to tour with IAM project doing gallery shows in New York City, Berlin, London, and Paris that helped him obtain new and more mature audiences. His work also had a more personal emotion.
Okuda is inspired by surrealism art, pop art, and even different culture the come across with through out his travels. He is also inspired by films that are created by Jodorowsky, Michael Gondry, Leos Carax, and Terry Guilliam to name a few. He is also often inspired by his environment, the people around him, cinema, fashion, ear music, traveling, and his everyday life.
During his career as a street artist he has encountered very few obstacles. These obstacles are generally around the false impressions the capitalism, religion, wars, and law enforcement give. They give individuals a false sense of freedom.
Okuda’s beliefs revolve around his freedom to create art and staying positive. He does not believe in religion but believes that God is inside every individual. The best way to live life is to be good and a peaceful person.
Okuda concludes that his major accomplishments lie in having the freedom to travel around the world creating his best works of art alone, working, and the living experiences with other artists from different cultures.
Okuda is a major international artist who has worked with major brands. His latest projects consisted in marking the reopening of Desigual’s Herald Square store in New York City with a large mural on its façade in December 2019. The 2-story mural reimagines the Statue of Liberty with vivid colors and contrasting geometric shapes. The Statue is holding Subway Art, a collaborative book that documents the rise of NYC’s underground graffiti art scene and published in 1984, the same year that Desigual was founded.
He also travels the world painting on buildings, walls and showing his work in major art galleries (Spiritual Boreal World at Secret Fresh Gallery in Manila, Philippines (2019), Metamorphosis at Heron Arts in San Francisco, USA (2019), Digital Zoo at La Galerie Paris 1839 in Hong Kong, China (2019), Kaos Star at Scope Art Show in Miami, USA (2018) and The Multicolored Equilibrium between Animals and Humans at Centro del Carmen in Valencia, Spain (2018).
In 2019 Okuda’s creativity took him to organise Kaos Garden, a party that debuted at Amnesia Ibiza, with following acts in Miami (December 6th) and New York (December 14th). Kaos Garden consisted in a unique immersive experience with the crowd interacting with Okuda’s surrealist fantasy world inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych the Garden of Earthly Delights accompanied by a five-hour set specially crafted for the occasion by Paco Osuna.
In the near future Okuda hopes to continue to grow as an artist like he has done over the past few years. He also hopes to complete larger projects and bigger buildings. Some of the countries he hopes to visit and paint in are Australia, United States, and Asian countries.
Okuda currently resides in Madrid, Spain.