This is my second post about Tomoko Sawada about whom I wrote two years ago already. Currently she has two exhibitions at KPO Gallery at Kirin PlazaKirin Plaza itself is worth a visit. The building – which gives the impression of a huge sculpture – by the architect Shin Takamtsu is a landmark building in Osaka. Scenes from the movie “Black Rain” were filmed at Kirin Plaza and at MEM gallery in Osaka (until Sept. 3).

“Masquerade” at KPO shows Tomoko Sawada in the guise of a few hundred different self-created identities. The exhibition includes the series “OMIAI” (2001), “Cover/Face” (2002) and “Recruit” (2006). A new book by Sawada with the title of the exhibition “Masquerade” is due to be published soon. In conjunction with the exhibition at Kirin Plaza, MEM gallery exhibits “Early Works” from 1996/97 which have not been shown to the public before.

A review in the Japan Times pointed me to the exhibition at KPO.Just as a side note: The Japan Times is the only English language newspaper in Japan which carries regular exhibitions reviews on Western and Japanese arts. But the lack of reviews/discussions on modern and contemporary art is not limited to English newspapers. It seems that the Japanese art world – in contrary to Europe and the USA – is quite isolated from the public discourse, since for example the Japanese newspapers don’t carry feature pages on art neither. By the way: the observation that the contemporary art world is isolated from the mainstream of the Japanese society is one pillar of Takashi Murakami’s controversially discussed “Superflat” art theory.

“All of them are me,” she said in a 2004 interview with NY Arts Magazine, “I don’t try to be someone else.”
That being so, her body of work is a phantasmagoric play of self-imaging that is volatile and restless in the infinite adjustments of pose, clothing, hair and makeup.

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