IIASN9-Teraoka

June 30 - December 1 1996
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Paintings by Masami Teraoka

Waves and Plagues

Japanese-born painter Masami Teraoka uses traditional imaginary to examine such contemporary themes as AIDS, sexuality, and cultural identity. Teraoka employs the imagery and conventions of the 19th-century woodblock print in many of his large water-colour paintings, which incorporate social satire and witty eroticism. This exhibition features 33 of his recent paintings and four prints and is organized by James Ulak, an associate curator of Japanese art for the Sackler and the neighbouring Freer Gallery of Art.

Also on view are 16 examples from Teraoka's personal collection of 19th century Japanese prints and drawings, most of them by Kunisada Utagawa (1786-1865), whose work Teraoka (1936) cites as the influence for much of his art. This exhibition is the first presentation of his work specifically planned to explore its visual sources and to seek an understanding of his paintings in the context of Japanese sensibility and tradition.
Teraoka first received international acclaim with his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York in 1979, and he has exhibited widely since. His distinctive style employs the graphic power and palette of traditional Japanese prints to explore aspects of life in the 20th century. Teraoka's personal iconography, drawn from Japanese and Western sources, includes catfish, ghosts, samurai, and geisha, as well as Adam and Eve, punk rockers, television, and London buses. Many of his images - like the traditional ones from which he draws inspiration -- are embellished by messages in Japanese, often reinforcing the paintings' ironic humour.

Water
Water and devastating illness, two themes that Teraoka calls 'waves' and 'plagues', have dominated his art for the past 15 years, including the works on view in the Sackler Gallery. Hawai'i, the artist's home since the early 1980s, is the backdrop for his portrayal of water, its visual rendering and multilayered symbolism. The exhibition includes paintings from the 'Hanauma Bay Series', a satire on vacationing Japanese as video-camera-wielding samurai in the surf. In many of these paintings, the artist portrays himself as a catfish, an image with roots in Japanese mythology and painting as far back as the late 14th an early 15th century. Also on view are examples from his 'Waves Series', illustrating an imagined sexual encounter between a female diver and an octopus. This painting is based on a powerfully erotic image created by the Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai in 1814.

Aids
Six images from Teraoka's 'AIDS Series' continue the artist's examination of this late 20th century pandemic, which curator Ulak describes as Teraoka's metaphor for human desire restrained and confounded by death. Teraoka's AIDS paintings have evolved from depictionţs of actors in Japan's traditional and highly stylized Kabuki plays to the image of a blond female active in the new world of circumscribed passion.
His latest works, which show Adam and Eve and other aspects of the Biblical creation narrative, are notable for the artist's shift from Japanese print conventions to a Western religious icon style.

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
1050 Independence Avenue SW
Washington DC 20560
USA
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