ARTS

Teraoka speaks on complex themes of his show

by Raphael Martin

Ghosts are telling stories at the Allen Art Museum these days. Ghosts of Adam and Eve, Japanese geishas and victims of AIDS. Masami Teraoka, a Japanese artist who now lives in Hawaii, is the conduit through which these ghosts speak. His exhibit "From Tradition to Technology, the Floating World Comes of Age" is at the Allen through May 31 and is one of the most moving, whimsical, dark and confessional shows to come to AMAM in quite some time.

Teraoka's medium is paint - both oil and watercolor - and he works on an enormous scale. His canvases are enormous, ranging in size from six to twenty feet in length and five to eight feet in height. His style is chaotic and dense. Teraoka's canvases are packed with detail.

His singular style is a hybrid of the traditional Japanese ukiyo-e - brightly colored and bold woodblock prints of scenes painted in a flat style - and American Pop Art. Teraoka explains that his work is made up of "Japanese cultural references with American social influences."

In conversation with two art classes one afternoon in the gallery, Teraoka, who has spent the week in residence at Oberlin, eloquently spoke about three of his pieces. The first piece, one of the most moving of the show, comes from Teraoka's AIDS series. Used in the museum's ad campaign for the exhibit, Geisha and AIDS Nightmare (1988) depicts a traditional Japanese geisha woman. On first glance, Teraoka's Geisha image is extremely traditional, in keeping with ukiyo-e tradition. As the viewer looks more closely anachronisms begin to be seen. These anachronistic touches are a definitive feature of Teraoka's style.

Hair a mess and skin spotted with lesions, the Geisha clutches condoms in one hand and a cherry-tree twig in the other. These three symbols-lesions, condoms and twig-are a potent symbolic combination. The viewer is forced to address the image of a geisha, a symbol of perfection and beauty in traditional Japanese society, ravaged by contemporary society's greatest horror. As a solemn juxtaposition, Teraoka includes the cherry-tree twig, a Japanese symbol of life and renewal, as a sobering reminder of what the disease robs from its victims. On her wrist she wears a digital watch and a hospital name-band; over her face, is cast the gray-green pallor of death.

The next painting that Teraoka turned his attention to was a transitional piece. Entitled The Garden of E-Mail, it depicts a naked Adam and Eve, both bald, tied up in computer mice. Both have assumed Frankenstein-like poses, arms outstretched, legs akimbo, with wrist braces on their wrists to ease the carpal tunnel syndrome both have contracted from using e-mail. The humor that underlines much of Teraoka's work is evident in this piece, as well as the usual social commentary.

Teraoka counterbalances the burden of the computer-age by setting the scene in the Australian outback. As Linda Hess, Teraoka's wife, who is accompanying him to Oberlin commented, "Masami juxtaposes the supposed environmental purity of the Australian outback with the internet-connected cultural smog of the United States." Teraoka is quick to point out that baldness is a positive element in his paintings. Due to the great number of chemotherapy patients that are surviving in recent years, Teraoka has re-appropriated the symbol of baldness: in his paintings baldness represents health and life.

The Garden of E-Mail, as mentioned above, is a transitional piece for Teraoka. "Ukiyo-e style of painting was becoming too familiar in my mind," Teraoka said to the group. "I needed a change." Gone is the sharp crispness of the ukiyo-e style. In this painting, and in his more current pieces, Teraoka has favored a much more highly rendered style, closer to Western art than Japanese art. Hess adds that "Masami wanted to show, visually, different modes of thought in his earlier paintings: between the old way and new way of thinking. For him, the old way of thinking is represented in the traditional geisha hairstyles and patterned kimonos. This is juxtaposed with the punk haircuts and S&M bondage-wear of contemporary culture." It is this new thinking that is prevalent in Teraoka's most current works.

The final piece that Teraoka ruminated on with the students was one of newest works, Virtual Inquisition / Ascending Chaos (1999). This, the largest of the pieces in the show, is a violent meditation on the recent Clinton impeachment affair. Teraoka was careful to point out that the work did not include actual renderings of the key players in the affair, but rather blurred figures that acted as the proverbial "Everyman."

"Our culture is becoming an incredibly media-saturated one. It is a tabloid culture. Today, every family has a church: the television monitor church," he said.

Teraoka skewers other recent hot-button issues in Virtual Inquisition as well. Most notably is his inclusion of the recent Viagra brouhaha. Viagra is used as a way to point out gender inequality. "Viagra and other male-oriented pills are tax-deductible. Female-oriented pills are not. I thought this was not fair so I started making fun of it in my work," Teraoka candidly stated.

This intimate moment between artist and students opened to a larger audience on Thursday, when Teraoka and Hess gave a slide lecture open to the general public. A packed Fisher Hall warmly applauded the sprightly artist. With long, graying hair tied back, a wispy goatee, and steel-frame glasses, Teraoka looked very much the part of the introspective artist. With good humor and eloquence he and Hess charted a brief chronicle of his more recent work.

"Quite often my paintings show the evolution of a single life. I am interested in documenting my living, today," he said. Teraoka spent time explaining his newest genre of painting he calls the "Confessional Series". These are paintings such as Virtual Inquisition, the painting that concerned the Clinton scandal. "The confessional series came out of what our American culture is all about. We are so quick to share our stories, our secrets, that within moments we know each other. To figure out American culture, I watched television talk-shows. In my Confessional Series of paintings, I wanted to juxtapose this kind of public confession with the medieval kind: dark, private, and taking place in a dungeon." Teraoka's work is layered with cultural references. The show at the Allen needs multiple viewings to be fully appreciated.

On a final note, addressed to the large audience in Fisher Hall, this energetic and passionate artist stated a simple idea; an idea that many consider truth: "If everyone in this society had a way to express themselves creatively we wouldn't have time to shoot each other. We need to encourage people to be creative. You wouldn't lose anything. That's all you can do." And Masami Teraoka could stop painting ghosts.


Photo:
Smile for the canvas: Masami Teraoka spoke to students this week. His art is currently on display at AMAM. (photo by Jake Schlesinger)

 

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Copyright © 1999, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 21, April 23, 1999

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