Yasumasa Morimura Self Portraits: An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo
Overview
With his newest work "An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo", Morimura continues not only his unique expression of beauty, but also his interpretation of masterworks of art history.
The exhibition "An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo" at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac represents the first exposure in Europe, of this latest work by Morimura, which at the same time is also exhibited at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (20.7. – 30.9.2001) and at Luhring Augustine in New York (8.9. – 6.10.2001).
Morimura, who usually does not travel to the openings of his exhibitions outside Japan, will be present for the opening at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.
With his newest work "An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo", Morimura continues not only his unique expression of beauty, but also his interpretation of masterworks of art history.
"An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo" took Morimura several years to complete, and pays homage to a remarkable woman / artist, whose life was full of love and passion and marked by both, mental and physical pain and suffering.
Joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, beauty, life and love are some aspects, which Morimura sees manifest in that Mexican artist's life and work, and which thus became the core themes of his own latest work, a revelation of Kahlo's world of joy and suffering.
Since his series "Selfportrait as Art History", 1985, his use of important paintings from Art History as sources for his work has been an important aspect of Morimura's work. Through the insertion of his own body into that of the persons portrayed in a certain painting, Morimura engages in a critical dialogue with the painting and provokes a reinterpretation thereof. Furthermore, he disrupts the mythical aura of his subjects.
"An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo" also demonstrates Morimura's continued comittment to the question of the diffusion and the exploration of one's identity and one's possibilities in terms of the construction and performativity of identity. Taking the practice of cross-dressing to its most radical, Morimura transgresses the borders between essentialist categories of male and female and subverts established conceptions of Occident and Orient. Morimura as a cultural critic suggests, through his work, a connection between certain Western constructions of femininity and certain Western constructions of Asia.
Morimura, currently based in Osaka, Japan, graduated with a B.F.A. from Kyoto City University in 1978. He had his first solo exhibition in 1983 and achieved international recognition in the late 1980s when he exhibited at the Aperto '88 and the Venice Biennale of 1988. Morimura's participation in the group show Against Nature : Japanese Art in the Eighties organised by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and travelling to major American Museums also contributed to his increasing international reputation.
Since the mid 1990s his focus shifted on contemporary icons such as Madonna and Michael Jackson and the world of cinema. "Psychoborg" and "Actresses" developed out of this interest. "Actresses" a series of photographs which included impersonifications of Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe were exhibited in 1996 at the Yokohama Museum of Art in the exhibition entitled "Beauty unto Sickness" and in 1997 at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris.
Morimura's artistic output is not confined to making photography but ranges across a wide variety of events, including the direction of live performances and collaborations with stage directors and fashion designers. Morimura also published his writings and appeared on television programmes. His work has been widely exhibited throughout Asia, America and Europe.
