Shohei Yamamoto “iconic”
I visited Shohei Yamamoto’s solo exhibition “iconic.”
The venue is MEDEL GALLERY SHU, a gallery on the 2nd floor of Imperial Hotel Plaza.
The show was originally released online-only from late May, but with the lifting of the state of emergency, an in-person exhibition became possible from June 1 to 7.
As the title “iconic” suggests, this is a show that gathers Shohei Yamamoto’s iconic works — “skull,” “banana,” “radial,” and “signature” — and only those.
“skull”
The skull is one of the frequently recurring motifs of “vanitas,” a genre carried on continuously through painting history from the Baroque period. Vanitas — Latin for emptiness — has an affinity with Buddhist philosophy, one of the starting points of Yamamoto’s practice, and is also a theme often taken up in contemporary art.
“banana”
A series that uses the banana — today, a stand-in for any number of metaphors.
“radial”
A motif that takes “perspective” — as used on a two-dimensional surface — as its subject.
By translating into paint the lines that pseudo-reproduce three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface, and repeating them by hand with a roller, Yamamoto brings the motion of matter, time, and their misalignment to the surface.
“signature”
Here Yamamoto uses a handmade roller to repeat Andy Warhol’s autograph.
It is a piece that attempts to connect with Andy Warhol, who criticized mass production and mass consumption through his silkscreens.
