In Past Show

Proximities 2: Knowing Me, Knowing You at Asian Art Museum

Kota Ezawa produces animated videos, slide projections, lightboxes, collages, and prints that recreate images and events from recent history and popular culture. Through a labor-intensive process that involves the production of hundreds of drawings, Ezawa translates charged events, such as the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, into simplified animations. In The Simpson Verdict (2002), he transforms the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial into a 3-minute-long cartoon version, playing on notions of image-saturation and the power of these references in the popular imagination. Speaking of the painterly quality of his bold colors and forms, Ezawa has said, “I feel that I’m in the business of making moving paintings more than making videos with a beginning and an end.”