In Kota Ezawa’s first solo exhibition with Fraenkel Gallery, the artist presents a range of multimedia works from across his career, from lightboxes and paper collages, to a new animation and larger-than-life sculpture. Using a variety of materials and techniques to distill images to their essential colors and shapes, Ezawa transforms key images from art history and popular culture, often aggregating views of a common theme or event to create a suite of related works in varying forms. We take a closer look at new pieces from his current show, detailing the artist’s practice and the shifting meaning of his work as it is shown in different contexts.
In the new digital animation I’ll repeat the question, 2024, Ezawa spotlights an exchange from 2018 in which then-Senator Kamala Harris asks Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh if he knows of any laws that govern the male body. Ezawa renders the C-SPAN video into flattened, simplified shapes, giving the subjects a mask-like appearance emphasizing the theatrical quality of the event. The significance of the moment has shifted over time, as Kavanaugh went on to help overturn Roe v. Wade. Ezawa began the work shortly before President Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, and the impact of the exchange continues to evolve as Harris now campaigns for President.
In addition to animation, Ezawa renders Kavanaugh Hearings as an acrylic pigment print on plywood. Ezawa is interested in events that stir strong emotions, enabling him to meditate on the chosen imagery and center the same subject across different modes of presentation, including paper collages and lightboxes. On working with varied techniques, Ezawa states “Whenever you use a new material, everything can go wrong, but you have to open yourself up.”
Two lightboxes depict the arrival of the Grand Princess cruise ship into the picturesque landscape of the San Francisco Bay in March 2020. The subject of a related video animation and vinyl wall installation, the scene evokes the anxiety and alienation that marked the coming of a global pandemic. In one lightbox, on view for the first time, the ship’s passengers wave from their balconies.
In the other lightbox, the huge ship attracts a small crowd, who watch as it enters the Bay. Causing a traffic jam on the Bay Bridge as people stopped to take its picture, the Grand Princess became, as Ezawa puts it, “an icon for the virus, which was invisible.” Images of the ship were viewed around the world, circulating through the media as news of the pandemic spread.
Hand Vote pictures more than a dozen men and women with their hands raised in an act of civic involvement. The piece has existed in several iterations since Ezawa created the earliest 11-inch tall version of the sculpture in 2008, in the runup to that year’s historic presidential election. Produced over the course of more than 15 years, each version of the piece has come with its own associations, inevitably influenced by the time and place it was shown.
Created in a new scale for the Fraenkel Gallery exhibition, the piece is presented as part of an exhibition that opens days before another historic presidential election, in which the act of voting has itself become a contentious political issue. To the artist, at its core, the work depicts the machinations of democracy. A further significance of the piece may emerge after the election—as Ezawa has noted, “The meaning always comes afterwards.”
