The fluorescent pink of Tetsumi Kudo’s heart calls out to us. Kitsch and shiny, contrary to blood red, it nevertheless presents itself as a vital organ, so to speak. This...
The fluorescent pink of Tetsumi Kudo’s heart calls out to us. Kitsch and shiny, contrary to blood red, it nevertheless presents itself as a vital organ, so to speak. This heart sprung from dirt and broke free from an alienating technology ; it seems to be beating to the rhythm of the electronic pulsations emanating from the circuits filling it with life. Contemporary to the Pollution - Cultivation - Nouvelle écologie series, it is the offspring of this « new ecology » imagined by the Japanese artist. Man, Nature and Technology have merged. The pink and translucent skin reveals a digital veins tissue covered in pubic hairs and clumps of hair dripping like some kind of sap or resin. Provoking, singular and borderline-distasteful, Kudo’s work exhibits an extreme refinement ; it sparks off the imagination. As suggested by the title Cultivation by nature and people who are looking at it, the artworks evolve under the gaze of the spectator and vice versa. Two other smaller hearts are still growing out of the humus. Tetsumi Kudo’s sculptures are « portable temples of his own idea of the world » (Alain Jouffroy), miniature utopia models.
- Your Portrait: A Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective - The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 02.11.2013 - 19.01.2014) ; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (04.02.2014 - 30.03.2014) ; Aomori Museum of Art (12.04.2014 - 08.06.2014)
- Cosmos 99, Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (FR), 2024
Catalogues
- Tetsumi Kudo - Cultivation, Louisiana Museum of Modern p.90