exhibit reviews:
Dark
Matters, Yerba Buena Center
for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
by Tonya Warner
Joachim
Schmid,
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
by Tonya Warner
Her(his)tory
(Part I),
Museum of Cycladic Art
Athens, Greece
by Rea Cris
Misako
Inaoka,
Stephen Wirtz Gallery
San Francisco, CA
by Tonya Warner
Tokihiro
Sato,
Haines Gallery
San Francisco, CA
by Tonya Warner
Misako Inaoka: The Origin of
Species
Stephen Wirtz Gallery
San Francisco, CA
5 – 29 September 2007
by Tonya Warner
Misako Inaoka’s work centers around two key themes: the miniature
& artificial nature. She creates delicately detailed pseudo-natural
forms with a great attention and care towards their display. For her exhibition
at Wirtz, Inaoka’s attention to detail is evidenced throughout –
from her creatures themselves to the twisted tree branches sprouting from
the gallery walls, to the plaster hooves footing small tables. She even
went so far as to assign and hand type invented Latin genus and species
names to each animal in her menagerie.
Entitled “The Origin of Species,” the show mostly features
deformed or half-evolved creatures made from plastic song birds and other
toy parts; many will still move and chirp when activated by their motion
sensors. With her use of vitrines and typed labels, the artist appears
to be drawing upon the current fascination with 18th century Kunstkammers,
or cabinets
of curiosity. The cabinets were more rooms than pieces of
furniture and were intended to display specimens from the range of the
natural world, with an emphasis on the exotic and unusual – including,
of course, medical oddities. This fascination with the anomaly seems to
be perfectly expressed in Inaoka’s creations, who sometimes sport
two head, or no head at all.
Still, she does all this with a certain lightness and humor, turning the
animals from unfortunate science experiments into endearing and yet damaged
creatures you want to take home and nurture. The fact that some are allowed
to still move and sing only increases the fascination and humor inherent
in these little oddities. The artist invites us to be taken in by these
figures and their minute details, encouraging us all to stop and take
a closer look at the world around us.
bio - http://wirtzgallery.com/exhibitions/2007/2007_09/inaoka/inaoka_2007_frame.html
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