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Art
The Masked Portrait

When

Jan 11, 2008 – Feb 9, 2008

Tuesdays–Saturdays (10am–6pm)

Where
Marianne Boesky Gallery (509 W 24th St, 212.680.9889)
Price
FREE
Details
http://www.marianneboeskygallery.com/current/
Kamatani_large

The Masked Portrait is a snapshot of postwar Japanese art, featuring work by 30 artists from the late '40s to the present. Curator Midori Nishizawa invokes Takashi Murakami's thesis that Japanese culture is laced with signs of trauma stemming from the country's devastation in WWII: Shomei Tomatsu's photograph of a watch stopped at exactly 11:02am (when Nagasaki was bombed) sets the tone, and the project room features some particularly exciting specimens of '60s-era avant-garde, including Minoru Hirata's photographs of impromptu public performances, Jiro Takamatsu's string-stuffed soda bottles, and Natsuyuki Nakanishi's mysterious, egg-shaped Compacts Objects. Some unsettling eye candy from the reigning superflat generation caps it all off.

H.G. Masters