Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, July 9, 2022: Makoto Aida, a contemporary Japanese artist (#1617)

Saturday, July 9, 2022

Artist of the Day, July 9, 2022: Makoto Aida, a contemporary Japanese artist (#1617)

Makoto Aida (1965) is a contemporary Japanese artist known for his provocative works of manga, painting, video, photography, sculpture, and installation. Though less well known internationally than Takashi Murakami or Yoshitomo Nara, he is recognized in Japan as one of the preeminent figures of Japanese contemporary art.

His works range widely from refined graphic paintings such as A Picture of an Air Raid on New York City (1996), showing Japanese World War II fighter planes attacking the Manhattan skyline, to videos such as Lonely Planet (1998), where the artist sat in front of a world map dialling random numbers to see what languages people use in different countries. One of his most contentious works was the 'Assisted Suicide Machine' series, comprising nooses made of hiking and safety equipment designed to collapse under the weight of the victim. A small plastic stool to help a child reach a noose formed the most notorious object in the series.

In an exhibition at Galerie Perrotin in Hong Kong, Aida presented two new works: Comet-chan—a sculpture of an adolescent alien girl holding a copy of the Gutenberg Bible in her left hand while about to wipe fluorescent pink faeces from her rear—and a video work where the artist appears as the Japanese prime minister pleading in stilted English for other countries to follow the system of 'Sakoku' or closing off of the foreign trade and diplomatic relations that Japan followed during the Edo period. This Ocula Conversation is a combination of two seperate interviews, which both took place in Hong Kong on the occasion of the opening of the Galerie Perrotin exhibition.

Aida says he kept in mind that the works he would show at Galerie Perrotin would be presented alongside a concurrent exhibition at the gallery by Sophie Calle. 'Generally speaking, I don't think these works go well with Calle. However, instead of showing something similar, I thought it would be more interesting to show something opposite or contrasting in effect. In her works, Calle focuses on the lives of existing individuals. My understanding is that she seeks to think of human beings in a universal way. For my own part, however, in both my everyday life and artwork, I try to stay far away from the individual perspective. I have a habit of placing human beings in a thought experiment that represents an extreme situation. To me, these are the two polarities when it comes to examining the human condition. And so I wanted to confront the audience with these two extremes on one floor.
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