25/2/2001
Bruce Yonemoto
ICA, Sansom, Philadelphia
Yonemoto's exhibition at ICA will be his first one-person American museum show, and will feature video installations that he executed last year for the InterCommunciation Center in Tokyo. These works employ conventional movie techniques such as claymation and time-lapse shots as well as computer-processed images that spectacularly unfold on the screen.
Los Angeles artist Bruce Yonemoto (b.1949) is a third-generation American of Japanese descent. He is well known for his collaborative videos and media installations with his brother, Norman, which address clichés and myths of American culture (in particular the influence of Freudian psychology on film, television, and commercial advertising) and aspects of their identities as Japanese Americans.
Yonemoto's exhibition at ICA will be his first one-person American museum show, and will feature video installations
that he executed last year for the InterCommunciation Center in Tokyo. These works employ conventional movie
techniques such as claymation and time-lapse shots as well as computer-processed images that spectacularly
unfold on the screen.
This visually mesmerizing exhibition will fill both the Eleanor Biddle Lloyd Gallery on the first floor and the Edna
Shanis Tuttleman Gallery on the second floor. It will include The Time Machine, which Yonemoto has based on the
1960 science fiction movie after the novel by H. G. Wells. In his 16mm film, the artist juxtaposes time-lapse and
claymation images in the same frame and projects them together. With time-lapse he captures a blooming flower
until it wilts, and with claymation he does just the opposite. The sequence is repeated in an endless loop referring
to eternity, while the clock-shaped screen on which it is projected represents time.
Also in the show is a large, three-channel work, Hanabi Fireworks, which explores the possibility of forging
community -- in this instance through the public spectacle of fireworks -- in an age when corporations colonize many
facets of our lives. Blurred images of recognizable cinematic logos such as 20th Century Fox, MGM, Warner Brothers
and Columbia float like apparitions on multiple screens and morph into pyrotechnics.
Another work, La Vie Secrete, consists of a 1950's home movie screen and a closed-circuit video surveillance system.
This interactive piece allows the viewer to stick his or her head into a hole cut into the screen only to see the back
of their head. The title refers to René Magritté's series of paintings, which depict men viewing the back of their
heads.
A catalog with essays by Bruce Yonemoto, Carole Ann Konarides, and Takuo Komatsuzaki will be available for $10.
It is an InterCommunication Center, Tokyo Japan publication.
ICA is grateful to The Arcadia Foundation and the Barbara and Howard Wise Foundation for their generous support of "Bruce Yonemoto."
Additional support has been provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Dietrich
Foundation Inc., and the Advisory Board, friends, members of the Institute of Contemporary Art and the University of Pennsylvania. In Kind
Donation: Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz. (Information complete as of January 12, 2001.)
Image: Bruce Yonemoto, The Wedding, 1999. Installation view. Two-channel projection, screen. Courtesy of Blum + Poe, Santa Monica, CA.
ICA Hours:
Wednesday through Friday, 12 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Closed Monday and Tuesday
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 118 South 36th Street, Sansom,
Philadelphia, PA, USA United States of America, Phone: 215.898.7108