Yasumasa Morimura
“Los Nuevos Caprichos”
SHUGOARTS
Shinkawa 1-31-6,
Chuo, Tokyo 104-0033
Tel: 03-5542-3468
Fax: 03-5542-3469
http://www.shugoarts.com
May 21, – July 2, 2005
Opening Hours 11:00-19:00
Closing on Sundays, Mondays & Holidays
SHUGOARTS is pleased to announce a new works exhibition by Yasumasa Morimura. The artist was born in Osaka. After 1985, when he exhibited a photo work that he disguised as Vincent Van Gogh, he has been taking portraits of himself disguised as old master paintings or movie actresses.
His expression method varies from photo works, movie, and theatrical play to performance. Those various methods have one thing in common that he asks a question to viewer’s ego by disguising as other person, and reconsider the relationships between ourselves and others, as well as our own identity.
This new works solo show is composed with a focus on Francisco Goya’s etching prints book called “Los Caprichos”. In this series of works, Goya critically depicted politics and religions, vice and evil habit to satirize Spanish society in late 18th century. Morimura has challenged to create modern satire by re-decrypting and re-composing “Los Caprichos”.
His basic concept, that is to create a new understanding by disguising and slipping himself inside of art works, is thoroughly expressed in this new series, too. His new series is not necessarily matching to interpretation of Goya’s art works, but this is based on the essential elements that Morimura found in Goya’s art works: “Comedy / Laughter”, “Grotesque / Darkness” and “Allure / Beauty”… Morimura combined these complex elements to create “Los Nuevos Caprichos / Story of Satirist”, which is a skit of modern society directed and performed by Morimura. Viewers will discover various problems of our society in this series of fifteen dazzling scenes of war, economy, healthcare, complicated love-hate relationships, gender, and mode.
There will also be other works exhibited based on Goya’s “La Duquesa de Alba – Duchess of Alba” and “Black Paintings” series in relation to the artist. A beautiful photo book that introduces all these new series of 20 works has been published on this occasion. The photo book is A4 size, hard cover, and 56 pages of full color print. We believe this is a very interesting book that includes original drawings by Goya, so that you can enjoy comparing them with Mormura’s art works.