ob: Phantom Tales

When we visited Phantom Tales, ob was walking around the gallery with a tiny, hand-sized doll a friend had made for her. She was taking selfies in front of her paintings to share with the doll’s maker. If there was ever a moment that showed how people live anime-inflected fantasy worlds, this was it.

The palette is Frozen by way of late Monet waterlilies — all lilac, lavender, and submerged light. ob works in colored pencil, oil pastel, and oil on canvas, repeating the same precise stroke over and over without a waver. No visible hand, no brushmark. Step back, and they go soft and blurry. Almost moist.

ob's paintings are full of children with sad, moon-shaped eyes. They don't see you watching. They’re too lost in their own dreamscapes, watching fish at an aquarium, sitting beside a lily pond munching onigiri, or gazing at their reflection in a pool.

One painting that stuck with us: a girl stretched out on a couch, phone in hand — a classic reclining pose, updated for the front-facing camera. Then you notice a cat staring at its own reflection, and it clicks. The painting is a mirror selfie.

ob's characters live online because the real world hasn't given them a reason not to. Maybe that’s why they feel so sad. But, they also ooze a desire to make something out of a life lived online. Not to let it all drift, like waterlilies, on the surface.

ob (b. 1992, Kagoshima, Japan) lives and works in Saitama, just north of Tokyo. ob is an internet alias. She came up on Pixiv, a social networking and portfolio platform for artists of what's sometimes called the Satori generation: millennials and Gen Zers who started as anime and manga fan artists. She's now part of Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki studio. The online world isn't just her subject. It's where she came from.