Exhibition/event has ended.
Kotao Tomozawa＿ Dynamis and Explosion of Puissance
Sgùrr Dearg Institute for Sociology of the Arts
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Kotao Tomozawa
Kotao Tomozawa makes one aware of what it feels like to be alive on the boundary between life and death. The boundary between the breath of life and the fear of death, between chaos and the cosmos, between ecstasy and despair, and between dreams and reality dissolves away, creating a new realm of feeling that cannot be put into words. This is a realm where consciousness itself becomes chaotic, falling into darkness, where differences in level vigorously mix together without end. Therein lies something that transcends the organism, and which Antonin Artaud discovered in the limits of the living body, naming it “the body without organs.” Only an intensive reality manifests instantaneously, no longer determining itself with representative elements. It is the so-called “scream” itself, and the wave from this scream flows throughout the entire body. It is a glimpse of just this state of the body “before” organic representation.
This group of exhibited works hinting at the impossibility of Tomozawa’s representational behavior at this exhibition aligns with Deleuze’s description:
“No mouth. No tongue. No teeth. No larynx. No esophagus. No belly. No anus.” It is a whole nonorganic life, for the organism is not life, it is what imprisons life. The body is completely living, and yet nonorganic. Likewise sensation, when it acquires a body through the organism, takes on an excessive and spasmodic appearance, exceeding the bounds of organic activity. It is immediately conveyed in the flesh through the nervous wave or vital emotion.*
We must consider the special case of the scream. Kotao Tomozawa sees the scream as one of the most sublime subjects of painting. Painting the scream is not a matter of giving color to a particularly intense sound. Music also faces the same task—it cannot render the scream harmonious by any means. When Tomozawa screams, it always scrambles every spectacle, and lies beyond pain and feeling. This is what Bacon means when he says he wanted “to paint the scream more than the horror.” For Kotao Tomozawa, an acrid and strident polychromy is no longer necessary. Everything is now brought into the clear, a clarity greater than that of the contour and even of light. Kotao Tomozawa continues her scream in her body of work in which the eternal force of an unchanging time and the variable forces of a flowing time intermingle.
* Gilles Deleuze, “Hysteria,” chap. 7 in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Continuum, 2003), 45.
This group of exhibited works hinting at the impossibility of Tomozawa’s representational behavior at this exhibition aligns with Deleuze’s description:
“No mouth. No tongue. No teeth. No larynx. No esophagus. No belly. No anus.” It is a whole nonorganic life, for the organism is not life, it is what imprisons life. The body is completely living, and yet nonorganic. Likewise sensation, when it acquires a body through the organism, takes on an excessive and spasmodic appearance, exceeding the bounds of organic activity. It is immediately conveyed in the flesh through the nervous wave or vital emotion.*
We must consider the special case of the scream. Kotao Tomozawa sees the scream as one of the most sublime subjects of painting. Painting the scream is not a matter of giving color to a particularly intense sound. Music also faces the same task—it cannot render the scream harmonious by any means. When Tomozawa screams, it always scrambles every spectacle, and lies beyond pain and feeling. This is what Bacon means when he says he wanted “to paint the scream more than the horror.” For Kotao Tomozawa, an acrid and strident polychromy is no longer necessary. Everything is now brought into the clear, a clarity greater than that of the contour and even of light. Kotao Tomozawa continues her scream in her body of work in which the eternal force of an unchanging time and the variable forces of a flowing time intermingle.
* Gilles Deleuze, “Hysteria,” chap. 7 in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Continuum, 2003), 45.
Schedule | Jun 14 (Sat) 2025-Jul 27 (Sun) 2025 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://www.sgurrdearg.com/exhibitions/友沢こたおの「叫び」-爆ぜる身体/ | ||||
| Venue | Sgùrr Dearg Institute for Sociology of the Arts https://www.sgurrdearg.com/ | ||||
| Location | 2F NADiff A/P/A/R/T, 1-18-4 Ebisu Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0013 | ||||
| Access | 6 minute walk from the East exit of Ebisu Station on the JR Yamanote and Saikyo lines. 7 minute walk from exit 1 at Ebisu Station on the Hibiya line. | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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