Up close, they gut themselves with swords in ritual suicide. At first glance, the young Japanese girls in school uniforms smirk. From the start, viewers are confronted by ‘Harakiri School Girls’ (2002), an acrylic painting on hologram film, layered with print on transparency film. They’re meticulously crafted images that erupt at first sight, as if to inflict visual schizophrenia. For the first time in his 20-year career, Aida is having a retrospective exhibition at the Mori Art Museum.Īida’s paintings typically depict war, pretty young girls, politics, and businessmen. In the international art world he’s a misfit toy floating in a sea of misfit toys. In Japan he’s called the “bad-boy” of Japan’s contemporary art world. The said favorites are images prolifically painted by Japanese artist Makoto Aida.

These are a few of an artist’s favorite things-a giant blender shredding pretty young girls into a bloody milkshake mountains of dead businessmen and a giant woman being raped and killed by a giant three-headed dragon. His artistic activities are extremely wide-ranged as seen in the involvement in “The Group 1965 (Showa 40 nen kai)” whose members were all born in the year 1965, and in Alternative Puppet Theater “Gekidan☆Shiki” which his wife, also a fellow artist, Okada Hiroko organizes, novel-writing as well as comic-drawing. Primary exhibitions include: “The American Effect: Global Perspectives on the United States, 1990-2003” (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2003), “Roppongi Crossing: New Visions in Contemporary Japanese Art 2004” (Mori Art Museum, 2004), “BELIEF” (Singapore Biennale 2006), “Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art” (Japan Society, New York, 2011) and “The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art” (The First Kyiv International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kiev, Ukraine, 2012). Extensive participation in national and international exhibitions. Moving freely to and fro between society and history, across the borders between contemporary and pre-modern, east and west with a body of work that includes pretty young girls, war paintings, and salarymen, Aida’s distinctive style featuring bizarre contrasts and scathing critique has earned him a sizeable following among people of all ages. In 1991 he earned a post-graduate degree from the Tokyo University of the Arts. Quando obervamos de longe, pensamos ser uma pintura do cartão-postal Monte Fuji, mas, quando o olhar é aproximado percebe-se milhares de corpos de executivos empilhados formando a montanha.īorn 1965 in Niigata. “Espero que a sociedade se liberte de sua rigidez algum dia”, diz Aida.Īsh color Mountains (2011) talvez seja uma das obras mais conhecidas de Makoto Aida. Mas Makoto diz ter claramente um objetivo com o choque que as suas pinturas trazem ao espectador. Ironizando a sociedade japonesa, as suas obras podem ser polêmicas. Influenciado principalmente pelo diretor Yukio Mishima e pelo pai (sociólogo), as narrativas de suas pinturas foram sendo modificadas ao longo dos anos. O artista Makoto Aida, 47, nasceu em Niigata, no Japão, cidade duramente bombardeada pelos americanos durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Makoto aida