Makoto Aida Exhibition opens at Mizuma Art Gallery

Mizuma Art Gallery is holding Makoto Aida’s first solo exhibition in three years.

poster for Makoto Aida

Makoto Aida "I'm Mizuma's Iwaki!!"

at Mizuma Art Gallery
in the Nakameguro area
This event has ended - (2008-09-03 - 2008-10-04)

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In Photo Reports by Ashley Rawlings 2008-09-04 print email

The exhibition features some of the ''Dog'' series of works for which he is infamous.

One wall is covered with 574 frames, each containing a drawing made on pages from the Japanese translation of Immanuel Kant's ''Critique of Judgement''.A black relief titled ''Doha'' and a scroll laid out.

Sitting next to his large-scale ''Moco Moco'' painting, Makoto Aida gladly gives his autograph to a fan.

The English title of the work on the left is ''All Westerners should commit harakiri to take their responsibilities!'' but the wording in Japanese is stronger, more like: ''All you Westerners, take responsibility and commit harakiri!!''

Gallery owner Sueo Mitsuma (right) tells Roger McDonald from Arts Initiative Tokyo (left) about the exhibition in their 5th floor space.

Here, Aida's followers from Musashino Art University have produced a messy exhibition titled ''A Monument to Nothing''

The gallery is filled with the detritus of cardboard sculptures and reliefs...

... the works appear to have been made on site and are still in progress.

Although the material is cheap, the students' handiwork is relatively intricate.An irreverent portrait of their master...?

Ashley Rawlings

Ashley Rawlings. After a year of studying painting and mixed media at Chelsea College of Art & Design, he did his BA in Japanese Studies at the University of Cambridge. He moved to Tokyo in 2005, where he was a research student in the history of Japanese postwar art at Sophia University, and worked as a freelance editor, writer and translator. In addition to being editor of TABlog from 2006 to 2008, he contributed regularly to online and printed publications such as the Japan Times, ART iT.jp, Saatchi Online, ArtReview, ArtAsiaPacific and Artforum.com. He is also the editor of Art Space Tokyo, a 272-page guide to the Tokyo art world published by Chin Music Press in 2008. In 2009 he moved to New York, where he works as features editor of ArtAsiaPacific. » See other writings

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