Kota Ezawa (German, b. 1969), stills from Lennon Sontag Beuys (Joseph Beuys), 2004; auto-loop DVD; Courtesy the artist and Murray Guy, New York. |
Animated Videos on the Recent History of Culture and Society |
Kota Ezawa (German, b. 1969), stills from Lennon Sontag Beuys (Lennon and Ono), 2004; auto-loop DVD; Courtesy the artist and Murray Guy, New York.
Kota Ezawa (German, b. 1969), stills from Lennon Sontag Beuys (Lennon), 2004; auto-loop DVD; Courtesy the artist and Murray Guy, New York.
Kota Ezawa (German, b. 1969), The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 2005, DVD, Courtesy Murray Guy, New York. |
St. Louis Art Museum Kota Ezawa is known for creating videos by hand-tracing film and television footage with a computer software program. His approach to animation flattens the images and eliminates details, amplifying the remaining gestures. For Lennon Sontag Beuys, Ezawa selected clips from John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1969 "sleep-in" for peace in Amsterdam, a 2001 lecture by Susan Sontag at Columbia University and Joseph Beuys' 1974 lecture at the New School for Social Research in New York, redrew them as simplified animations and ran the animations in a continuous loop. In the Lennon-Ono clip, Lennon describes their honeymoon press conference as "a kind of salesmanship" for peace. Beuys comments on art as social sculpture, while Sontag considers the potential of photographs to prompt "moral awakening". Each crystallizes an influential position in the cultural and intellectual tumult of the later half of the 20th century. San Francisco-based Kota Ezawa, whose practice includes animated videos, slide projections, lightboxes and prints, is known for projects like The History of Photography Remix in which iconic moments from the history of photography and the media are represented through hand tracing and computer manipulation to create cartoon-like versions that critique the original images. These new versions of original source material are simplified, carrying the essence of the original information so that is easily understood while reducing everything down to shape and colour. Conceptually his practice explores the role of the camera and photograph in the reception and understanding of reality, while aesthetically his images become representations of a hyper-real. Based in San Francisco, USA, Kota Ezawa was born in Cologne, Germany in 1969. He received his MFA from Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, in 2003. He was featured in solo exhibitions at St Louis Art Museum, MO (2008); the Hayward Gallery, London (2007); Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver (2007); Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA (2007); Artpace, San Antonio, TX (2006); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (2005) and has been included in group shows at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2006); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (2005) and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (2005). Ezawa lives and works in San Francisco. He studied at Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf before completing a BFA at San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA at Stanford University. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Hayward Gallery, London (2007); Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver (2007); Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA (2007); Artpace, San Antonio, TX (2006); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (2005) and has been included in group shows at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2006); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (2005) and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (2005). Ezawa is represented by Murray Guy Gallery in New York. The exhibition is curated by Robin Clark, associate curator of contemporary art. |
Kota Ezawa (German, b. 1969), stills from Lennon Sontag Beuys (Susan Sontag), 2004; auto-loop DVD; Courtesy the artist and Murray Guy, New York. |
