I went to a solo exhibition by the visual artist Tomoyoshi Sakamoto. I slipped in at the very last minute on the closing day, Christmas Eve, December 24, 2017. The show made use of two venues in Asakusabashi — Art Lab TOKYO & Art Lab AKIBA (the same floor of the same building).
The exhibition opens right at the entrance with the F10 “Eye Test” tetralogy. It depicts a young woman in a contemporary style. Portraying pretty women with a cynical edge seems to be his signature, so you mustn’t let yourself be captivated by their beauty alone.
Three of the four works in the series were already sold (priced at 300,000 yen each). As it was the closing day, the other works were also roughly 80% sold.
The beauty-themed works were almost entirely sold out.
In Closing
Works that seem to depict beautiful women in pursuit of an ideal. Precisely because of that, they lack reality and feel devoid of human warmth. It is as if the male ego has been projected straight onto the canvas, leaving no sense of the real. Perhaps that is why the impression is of poison and pain radiating from the women on the canvas, fired directly toward the viewer.
They seem to carry a message like a banner of revolt raised by the women themselves — a rather tense exhibition.
