Group exhibition curated by Carlos Rolón and Tomokazu Matsuyama 'Die Young, Stay Pretty'
From March 10 (Fri), 2023, KOTARO NUKAGA, Roppongi is pleased to present ‘Die Young, Stay Pretty.’ The exhibition is co-curated by Chicago-based Puerto Rican American artist Carlos Rolón, whose practice explores themes of belonging and cultural identity, and artist Tomokazu Matsuyama, whose contemporary visual language functions as a representation of the reality of our times.
Rolón and Matsuyama’s practices are united by their shared examination of ideas of “beauty” that have emerged in post-colonial, non-Western aesthetic contexts—a theme that has carried significant weight in the larger art world as well, particularly since the exhibition ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989. The current exhibition is a result of a series of dialogues between Rolón and Matsuyama regarding the concept of beauty and its multifaceted, non-universal nature, a topic that has remained a central point of discourse throughout the history of art.
This exhibition features nine diverse international artists. Marilyn Minter brings critical perspectives to ideas of beauty that have arisen through the commodification and consumption of sex and the body in the fashion industry. Born in Pakistan, artist Huma Bhabha explores the peculiar strangeness of the modern-day human figure through eclectic objects and drawings that are based on a wide range of art historical references. Candida Höfer, a prominent pioneer of both German photography of the 1990s and the leading Becher School of contemporary photography, forms another central part of the exhibition; as do Sayre Gomez, Erwin Wurm, Joel Mesler, Takuro Kuwata, and the artists who doubled as the curators of this exhibition, Carlos Rolón and Tomokazu Matsuyama. Through their works, these artists throw a wrench into the discourse on “aesthetics” that has been defined by “art history.”
