eitoeiko is pleased to announce a solo exhibition ‘Makkuro Pop’ by OKAMOTO Mitsuhiro(b.1968). The exhibition is curated by Takeshi Kudo, a curator of Aomori Museum of Art. Makkuro means entirely black in Japanese. The word is also used with the meaning of the worst, and the baddest. Excerpt from the text by the curator:
In that sense, The work of OKAMOTO Mitsuhiro is opposed to the time which is characterized as the present. It is not an honest, it has not a weight. It rather makes a fool of a viewer, or it seems to be being ridiculous. This is why his work is underestimated in the art scene. Making a value is, in the other words, being recognized by an authority. And his activities are based on doubting it. OKAMOTO is an artist thoroughly distrusts about a right, a power and a public opinion called a common sense.
OKAMOTO’s attitude to making his art is consistent. He directly throws a question in a society. The question is formed by his own experience, his thoughts and recognition of the world as an Kyotojin (Japanese who was born and lives in Kyoto). And not to be committed to the others and a society, it is always crystallized with his personal filters in his brain. The process is strictly executed in the overseas, so sometimes OKAMOTO made the work which the people on the spot could never understand it. This attempt is considered as a perfect relativization. From his work, we can find out the relativization of ‘I’ and ‘You’, Japan and the world, the present and the past, and the front and the back of the subject. The question has no correct answer. The artist just indicates the gap of the meaning and the recognition which is occurred by the relativization. In recent years, OKAMOTO is known for his work about the problem of the copyright that does not protect a culture but uses for a concession. It suggests the situation like that culture dwarfing culture. Hence the reconstruction of a motif in a society is his body of the work even if the meanings were arranged, or were thrown away in the chaos. The gap by the relativization causes various feelings such as the surprise, laughter and the anger. And there is a something new viewpoint in his work. The most important thing for tasting OKAMOTO’s work deeply is thinking about where the various feelings come from. Today parody and irony are not permitted, and also humor and wit are not recognized as effective means of the critics. The work of OKAMOTO reminds us the pleasure of thought which is given from an intellectual play as well as the visual pleasure to open the mind from a closed society.
That is not a bland-new way. It continues from ancient. For example, a tragedy can transform into a comedy. It is easy to point out that is imprudent, but it is a fact that there is a person those who consumes a tragedy for his or her own feeling of satisfaction. Truth is not one thing, it changes easily by interpretation. Even one human being can have a lot of feelings, so it is impossible to understand a whole society, which is accumulating a mass of the unconscious minds. When it was interpreted, the different interpretation will be brought soon. I rather say the work of OKAMOTO indicates the world is still multilayered of the meanings, as though it seems that the world today advances homogenized, at least the surface of it. From his work, viewers can think about how to take care of the world.
Culture is an accumulating body of the intellect, and it is a complicated textile of the quotation. It generates both of the feelings and its meanings limitlessly. It is easy to make a beautiful thing by the surface of it. OKAMOTO does not want such a pure white, does not want to reflect us in a mirror of our surface. The artist aims to indicate a light in the darkness of the chaos. OKAMOTO reveals how our consciousness is controlled, and he gives us a hint about how to make a value which is rooted by each living. Pretending to be bad is better than white hypocrisy. That is the reason why I titled this exhibition ‘Makkuro Pop’.

［作家プロフィール］
OKAMOTO Mitsuhiro (b.1968, Kyoto)
1994 M.A. study of education, Shiga University
1994-96 Studied at The Art Students League of New York
1997-99 CCA Kitakyushu, as a researcher artist
2001-2004 Artist residencies in German, India and Spain
2004-2006 Lives and works in Okinawa and Taiwan
2007- Lives and works in Kyoto
2012- Opens artist run gallery Kunst Arzt in Kyoto
Exhibitions
The Art History of Bishojo - Beautiful Girls, Aomori Museum of Art, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shimane Art Museum, 2014/ Gifu Ogaki Biennale, 2013/ Fukuoka Contemporary Art Chronicle, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, 2013/ Fashion Fables, Kobe Fashion Museum, 2010/ Strange World, Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery, UK, 2009/ White Cottage, Taiwan, 2008/ Just Love Me, The Royal T, Los Angeles, 2008/ Thermocline of Art - Asian New Waves, ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, 2007, and many others