Nishizawa Chiharu’s paintings tackle big issues. Rampant materialism, environmental destruction and military conflict all serve as fodder for his satirical canvases with titles such as Go for Human’s Profit! and Like Today’s “in” Power, both of which are currently on display at Metaphysical Art Gallery in a show titled Exodus — Where Are You From?
But the contemporary Japanese painter confesses that the onset of middle age and the birth of his two children have led him over the past year in a more optimistic direction.
“My recent works express my dreams and hopes for the world’s future,” he said. “I chose the word ‘exodus’ to imply that children are heading towards a better place than what we see around us today.”
Fortunately for the viewer, the transformation has been miniscule as many of these later canvases retain the irony and black humor that mark all
his works.
Two formal aspects of Nishizawa’s work are immediately striking: his use of a bird’s-eye perspective and the numerous flat figures that populate the barren landscapes of his paintings. Both elements find their origins in yamato-e, a traditional Japanese genre of painting that draws the viewer in with its attention to detail and storytelling that features many, often unrelated, plots.
“With yamato style painting I can create many stories within the context of a broad theme,” he said.
Nishizawa employs the form to great effect. And though the themes of his work vary, they demonstrate how humans, because we are caught up in our own individual worlds, fail to grasp a bigger picture — one that Nishizawa presents as perpetuating a current predicament or causing imminent harm.
Survivor, for example, shows numerous figures milling about a maze who are presumably the servants of three heroic-looking masters standing on elevated podiums. Dressed in business suits of identical shape and size (all men are depicted as balding), these figures trapped in the labyrinth represent Japan’s middle-class salarymen.
And yet each possesses a different facial expression and gesture and is engaged in a different kind of activity (whether brawling or arguing or looking off into the distance) — suggesting the individuality that exists beneath the generalization. Taken as a whole, the painting illustrates how the masses toil for a privileged few.
Go for Human’s Profit! encapsulates the drama of environmental destruction. It depicts numerous workmen clear-cutting the trees from two mountains, while a third stands already denuded, its human inhabitants fighting among themselves.
For Nishizawa, Survivor and Go for Human’s Profit! fall into his earlier, pessimistic period. In the series for which this show is titled, the appearance of children erases the tension between toil and fighting, work and war.
The purity of children is juxtaposed with the grubby aspirations of adults in Exodus – a. A mob of men dressed in military fatigues is in the process of withdrawing (evacuating?) from a smog-filled city at the top of the canvas to greener pastures at the bottom. Their escape, however, is blocked by a row of children, the symbolic guardians of Arcadia.
With all his social criticism and glorification of the innocence of childhood, I asked Nishizawa if he felt that his canvases might bring about any lasting change in society.
“I doubt that my art has much influence on contemporary society. But this doesn’t stop me from raising these questions,” he said.
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