Offsite: Kota Ezawa

Artist Kota Ezawa’s diverse projects take the form of digital animations, slide projections, lightboxes, paper cut-outs, intaglio etchings, ink drawings and wood sculptures. Using well-known images from the history of photography, film and the popular media, Ezawa’s pared down renderings speak to the iconic status of photography; despite the elimination of much information, the source is often still recognizable. Through this elaborate transformation of existing images, Ezawa’s work comments on the role of photography in shaping our perception of reality, the spectacular nature of the media and the limits of memory.
 
For Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite, Ezawa’s large-scale wooden tableau pictures a group of people raising their hands to vote in what appears to be a town hall meeting. The work is a visual representation of democracy by one of its most prevalent signifiers: the vote. Ezawa’s rendering is faithful to the original source image by maintaining the photograph’s basic structure and framing. By eliminating details, the image refers less to a specific group of individuals, and more to a general sign of a collective body united in a common purpose. In light of recent events in which demands for societal reform have become apparent both in Canada and abroad, Ezawa’s portrait of democracy could not be more timely.
 
Kota Ezawa has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions across Canada and the United States, and in group exhibitions at such prominent institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Art Institute of Chicago and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris to name a few.