Yasumasa Morimura’s Exhibition Opens at Roppongi’s ShugoArts from April 19

The exhibition “Yasumasa Morimura: Delightful Fivefold Personality” will be held at ShugoArts in Roppongi, Tokyo, from Friday, April 19 to Saturday, June 1.

Yasumasa Morimura is an Osaka-born artist who, beginning with his 1985 self-portrait “Portrait of Van Gogh” in which he portrays himself as Van Gogh, has continued to exhibit works centering on “self-portrait photographs in the guise of something else” with the consistent theme of “I” and a variety of subjects. In April, he published a book titled “Is Art Necessary for Survival?

In this exhibition, Morimura will present a total of 14 works, including his latest, in the roles of the Japanese painter Kainosho Tadaoto, Napoleon, Milo’s paintings, Kafka, and Lu Xun. Morimura, in discussing the seemingly unordered existence of a wide variety of personalities within himself, affirms “the lack of unity, the unorganized scattering, the mixing of different characters and values, and the fact that it does not create a hierarchy,” and states that he wants to avoid “convergence into a fixed identity. He also states that he wants to avoid “converging on a fixed identity.

This is not intended to be an entertainment,
But it is an enjoyable show.

I don’t fall in love with stories that have a beginning and end,
But something is being said.

A quiet cacophony explodes inward and outward.
So, a five-person exhibition of just one person.

Yasumasa Morimura (*”Yasumasa Morimura: Fun Fivefold Personality” press release / from ShugoArts’ exhibition site)