Chiezo Taro "Passion"
Parcel
Until Mar 30
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Artists
Chiezo Taro
PARCEL is pleased to present an exhibition focusing on Taro Chiezo’s paintings from the 1990s alongside his new body of works.
This marks his second solo exhibition at PARCEL, following “90’s and /or 20’s” in 2023. Taro Chiezo debuted as an artist in 1991 with the exhibition Invisible Bodies, a group exhibition alongside Dennis Oppenheim, at a gallery in SoHo, New York. The following year, he participated in the Post-Human exhibition, which toured five museums in Europe, alongside Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, and other artists. He is considered one of the leading figures of the 1990s Neo-Pop movement, which included artists such as Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami.
Starting this February, three of Taro Chiezo’s representative works, including the newly acquired War (Pink is the Color of Blood) (1996), will be featured in the special exhibition “Dark Tourism by Artists” as part of The MOMAT Collection (February 11–June 15, 2025) at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. War (Pink is the Color of Blood) is positioned within the context of war paintings such as Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita’s Last Stand at Attu and The Battle of Guadalcanal, which are on indefinite loan to the museum. Chiezo’s work can be seen as a war painting that perceives the postmodern era through the lens of reproduction technologies.
“No good, not good at all. The light is all wrong!” — from Passion by Jean-Luc Godard
In 1982, as a first-year student in Cinema Studies at New York University, Taro Chiezo encountered Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion at a theater in New York. The film interweaves the story of a director, modeled after Godard himself, attempting to recreate paintings by Rembrandt and Goya as living tableaux with a real-life labor movement occurring in the town. The montage of past masterpieces quoted in the film, juxtaposed against contemporary reality, inspired Chiezo with its immense potential.
Art historian Victor Stoichita, in The Self-Aware Image: An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting (Studies in Baroque Art) (Harvey Miller Studies in Baroque Art) by Victor I. Stoichita and Lorenzo Pericolo, discusses the innovative nature of “Meta-paintings.” This structural layering, seen in Pieter Aertsen’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, is similarly found in War (Pink is the Color of Blood) and The Laws of Economy, both of which will be exhibited. In War (Pink is the Color of Blood), a television screen capture overlays William Turner’s The Angel Standing in the Sun, with missiles drawn in, and beneath them, yet another layer of imagery. In The Laws of Economy, the montage is even more refined, incorporating Turner’s The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, now featuring an Tokusatsu (special effects) hero. Just as Harue Koga assembled images from magazines and postcards to create a single tableau in The Sea, Chiezo constructs his paintings by montaging images from art books, television screens, and digital sources.
In the 1996 Summer issue of ARTFORUM, art critic Justin Spring reviewed Chiezo’s solo exhibition at Sandra Gering Gallery in New York, where War (Pink is the Color of Blood) was unveiled. He wrote:
“Chiezo’s brilliance lies in describing in visual terms the immediate excitement surrounding the prepackaged technologies of television, video, the computer, and the Internet, a visual analogy for the instant (and ultimately unsatisfying) gratification available through electronic media. The four large-scale paintings in the show featured Japanese cartoon characters found in various sites on the Net. In these oil-based collages on canvas, Chiezo created a painterly vision of jumbled computer- and television-generated imagery and the mindlessly optimistic consumer culture that produces it. The unlikely combination of “Japanimation” with AbEx techniques and a bright, highly keyed palette of fluorescent paints can be seen as a wry comment on the status of painting itself in a world overrun with computer-generated imagery. Quite apart from their deadpan comedy, however, the works are remarkable for their delectably artificial sense of color: to gaze at one is to linger in a world of lollipops, neon, and plastic. While the paintings are formally impressive, a mechanized sculpture that creeps around its own little laser-disk-paved playpen (A Robot to Fall in Love /or not, 1994) steals the show. “
The four large-scale works presented in this exhibition feature characters from Japanese manga found on various websites. These oil-painted collages on canvas vividly depict the imagery produced by computers and television and the carefree, optimistic consumer culture surrounding them. The unlikely yet compelling combination of Japanimation techniques, Abstract Expressionist methods, and fluorescent palettes offers a sharp commentary on the status of painting in a world flooded with computer-generated images. Far from being a deadpan comedy, these works shine with an almost edible, artificial color palette reminiscent of lollipops, neon, and plastic. While the paintings themselves are formally striking, the mechanized sculpture crawling over a small playground lined with laser discs (A Robot to Fall in Love /or not, 1994) is truly mesmerizing.”
The Laws of Economy (1996) is a major work from the same series as War (Pink is the Color of Blood). It was the centerpiece of Chiezo’s solo exhibition that inaugurated Tomio Koyama Gallery at Sagacho Exhibit Space. The image of a Tokusatsu (special effects) hero extinguishing flames on his own burning lower body within a scene referencing Turner’s The Burning of the Houses of Parliament seems to metaphorically depict Japan’s response to the bursting of the economic bubble. The same wall in this gallery later hosted seminal works by artists such as Takashi Murakami, including 727.
Chiezo’s latest paintings explore the relationship between prewar avant-garde art and manga within the history of modern Japanese art. Notably, his depiction of the “single eye” motif in works like Ninjutsu: As a Materialist (2025) carries an intense gaze that, unlike traditional concerns with multiple perspectives and viewpoints, transforms the viewer into an object—a total image. This “single eye” motif has appeared repeatedly in his works since the 1990s. Additionally, the exhibition includes paintings that pay homage to Michinao Takamizawa, who designed the covers for MaVo, the prewar avant-garde magazine, by montaging images of cats and dogs, as well as works honoring prewar avant-garde painter Toki Okamoto.
This marks his second solo exhibition at PARCEL, following “90’s and /or 20’s” in 2023. Taro Chiezo debuted as an artist in 1991 with the exhibition Invisible Bodies, a group exhibition alongside Dennis Oppenheim, at a gallery in SoHo, New York. The following year, he participated in the Post-Human exhibition, which toured five museums in Europe, alongside Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, and other artists. He is considered one of the leading figures of the 1990s Neo-Pop movement, which included artists such as Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami.
Starting this February, three of Taro Chiezo’s representative works, including the newly acquired War (Pink is the Color of Blood) (1996), will be featured in the special exhibition “Dark Tourism by Artists” as part of The MOMAT Collection (February 11–June 15, 2025) at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. War (Pink is the Color of Blood) is positioned within the context of war paintings such as Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita’s Last Stand at Attu and The Battle of Guadalcanal, which are on indefinite loan to the museum. Chiezo’s work can be seen as a war painting that perceives the postmodern era through the lens of reproduction technologies.
“No good, not good at all. The light is all wrong!” — from Passion by Jean-Luc Godard
In 1982, as a first-year student in Cinema Studies at New York University, Taro Chiezo encountered Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion at a theater in New York. The film interweaves the story of a director, modeled after Godard himself, attempting to recreate paintings by Rembrandt and Goya as living tableaux with a real-life labor movement occurring in the town. The montage of past masterpieces quoted in the film, juxtaposed against contemporary reality, inspired Chiezo with its immense potential.
Art historian Victor Stoichita, in The Self-Aware Image: An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting (Studies in Baroque Art) (Harvey Miller Studies in Baroque Art) by Victor I. Stoichita and Lorenzo Pericolo, discusses the innovative nature of “Meta-paintings.” This structural layering, seen in Pieter Aertsen’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, is similarly found in War (Pink is the Color of Blood) and The Laws of Economy, both of which will be exhibited. In War (Pink is the Color of Blood), a television screen capture overlays William Turner’s The Angel Standing in the Sun, with missiles drawn in, and beneath them, yet another layer of imagery. In The Laws of Economy, the montage is even more refined, incorporating Turner’s The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, now featuring an Tokusatsu (special effects) hero. Just as Harue Koga assembled images from magazines and postcards to create a single tableau in The Sea, Chiezo constructs his paintings by montaging images from art books, television screens, and digital sources.
In the 1996 Summer issue of ARTFORUM, art critic Justin Spring reviewed Chiezo’s solo exhibition at Sandra Gering Gallery in New York, where War (Pink is the Color of Blood) was unveiled. He wrote:
“Chiezo’s brilliance lies in describing in visual terms the immediate excitement surrounding the prepackaged technologies of television, video, the computer, and the Internet, a visual analogy for the instant (and ultimately unsatisfying) gratification available through electronic media. The four large-scale paintings in the show featured Japanese cartoon characters found in various sites on the Net. In these oil-based collages on canvas, Chiezo created a painterly vision of jumbled computer- and television-generated imagery and the mindlessly optimistic consumer culture that produces it. The unlikely combination of “Japanimation” with AbEx techniques and a bright, highly keyed palette of fluorescent paints can be seen as a wry comment on the status of painting itself in a world overrun with computer-generated imagery. Quite apart from their deadpan comedy, however, the works are remarkable for their delectably artificial sense of color: to gaze at one is to linger in a world of lollipops, neon, and plastic. While the paintings are formally impressive, a mechanized sculpture that creeps around its own little laser-disk-paved playpen (A Robot to Fall in Love /or not, 1994) steals the show. “
The four large-scale works presented in this exhibition feature characters from Japanese manga found on various websites. These oil-painted collages on canvas vividly depict the imagery produced by computers and television and the carefree, optimistic consumer culture surrounding them. The unlikely yet compelling combination of Japanimation techniques, Abstract Expressionist methods, and fluorescent palettes offers a sharp commentary on the status of painting in a world flooded with computer-generated images. Far from being a deadpan comedy, these works shine with an almost edible, artificial color palette reminiscent of lollipops, neon, and plastic. While the paintings themselves are formally striking, the mechanized sculpture crawling over a small playground lined with laser discs (A Robot to Fall in Love /or not, 1994) is truly mesmerizing.”
The Laws of Economy (1996) is a major work from the same series as War (Pink is the Color of Blood). It was the centerpiece of Chiezo’s solo exhibition that inaugurated Tomio Koyama Gallery at Sagacho Exhibit Space. The image of a Tokusatsu (special effects) hero extinguishing flames on his own burning lower body within a scene referencing Turner’s The Burning of the Houses of Parliament seems to metaphorically depict Japan’s response to the bursting of the economic bubble. The same wall in this gallery later hosted seminal works by artists such as Takashi Murakami, including 727.
Chiezo’s latest paintings explore the relationship between prewar avant-garde art and manga within the history of modern Japanese art. Notably, his depiction of the “single eye” motif in works like Ninjutsu: As a Materialist (2025) carries an intense gaze that, unlike traditional concerns with multiple perspectives and viewpoints, transforms the viewer into an object—a total image. This “single eye” motif has appeared repeatedly in his works since the 1990s. Additionally, the exhibition includes paintings that pay homage to Michinao Takamizawa, who designed the covers for MaVo, the prewar avant-garde magazine, by montaging images of cats and dogs, as well as works honoring prewar avant-garde painter Toki Okamoto.
Schedule Now in session | Feb 22 (Sat) 2025-Mar 30 (Sun) 2025 10 days left Opening Hours Information
Opening Reception Feb 21 (Fri) 2025 18:30 - 21:00 | ||||
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://parceltokyo.jp/exhibition/passion/ | ||||
| Venue | Parcel http://parceltokyo.jp/ | ||||
| Location | 1F DDD hotel, 2-2-1 Nihombashi, Bakurocho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 103-0002 | ||||
| Access | 1 minute walk from exit C4 at Bakurocho Station on the JR Sobu line, 5 minute walk from the East exit of Asakusa-bashi Station on the JR Chuo Sobu line, 5 minute walk from exit A2 at Asakusa-bashi Station on the Toei Asakusa line. | ||||
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