• Kota Ezawa:
    Paper Cutouts
  • Kota Ezawa translates images from films, television footage, and well-known photographs into lightboxes, animated videos, and works on paper. In this selection of cut paper collages, the Oakland-based multimedia artist revisits scenes depicted in some of his most important works. The handcut works mirror the pared down, flattened style of Ezawa’s digitally produced works. Forms and figures are stripped of shade, contour and texture, becoming at once visually iconic and emotionally ambiguous. By reducing complex imagery into its most essential, two-dimensional elements, Ezawa explores how the mediated image shapes public perception and our memory of actual events. 
    • Kota Ezawa Brawl #1, 2011 Cut paper collage 8.5 x 11.5 inches
      Kota Ezawa
      Brawl #1, 2011
      Cut paper collage
      8.5 x 11.5 inches
      $3,500
      Inquire
    • Kota Ezawa Brawl #2, 2011 Cut paper collage 9.75 x 12 inches
      Kota Ezawa
      Brawl #2, 2011
      Cut paper collage
      9.75 x 12 inches
      $3,500
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  • Brawl illustrates scenes from the Malice at the Palace, an infamous fight between players and fans at a 2004 NBA game between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers. What began as a foul and a cup of beer thrown from the stands, ended with the suspension of 9 players, the lifetime ban of 5 fans from the venue, and changes in safety rules and regulations by the NBA. Ezawa likens the scene to a Rubens painting, an ordinary foul quickly escalating into multiple points of conflict. As with his 2019 work National Anthem, Ezawa is less interested in the sport itself, than in what these events reveal about the tensions of race, stardom, commodification, and the televised spectacle.
  • Lennon, Sontag, and Beuys all draw from archival footage of their titular figures addressing notions of peaceful protest: John Lennon...
    Kota Ezawa
    Lennon, 2011
    Cut paper collage
    9.5 x 11.75 inches
    $3,500
    Inquire
    Lennon, Sontag, and Beuys all draw from archival footage of their titular figures addressing notions of peaceful protest: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, surrounded by journalists, tout the potential of their "bed-in" to stop war; Susan Sontag, seen giving a lecture at Columbia University, discusses how images of violence might be considered instruments of protest; and Beuys, filmed in the ‘70s during a public forum at the New School in New York, expounds on his thesis of “social sculpture." By bringing together these three distinct messages, Ezawa exemplifies how an artist — whether musical, literary, or visual — can act as an agent of social change.
    • Kota Ezawa Sontag, 2011 Cut paper collage 9.5 x 11.75 inches
      Kota Ezawa
      Sontag, 2011
      Cut paper collage
      9.5 x 11.75 inches
      $3,500
      Inquire
    • Kota Ezawa Beuys, 2011 Cut paper collage 9 x 12 inches
      Kota Ezawa
      Beuys, 2011
      Cut paper collage
      9 x 12 inches
      $3,500
      Inquire
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    • Kota Ezawa Who's Afraid of Black White Grey #2, 2011 Cut paper collage 8.75 x 10.75 inches
      Kota Ezawa
      Who's Afraid of Black White Grey #2, 2011
      Cut paper collage
      8.75 x 10.75 inches
      $3,500
      Inquire
    • Kota Ezawa Who's Afraid of Black White Grey #1, 2011 Cut paper collage 8.75 x 11 inches
      Kota Ezawa
      Who's Afraid of Black White Grey #1, 2011
      Cut paper collage
      8.75 x 11 inches
      $3,500
      Inquire
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  • Two related works focus on Mike Nichols’ 1966 directorial debut Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which George, a college professor (Richard Burton) and his wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) fall victim to their own toxic marriage in a seemingly endless night of drinking, debauchery, and psychological violence. The film was nominated for every Oscar it qualified for, its emotionally draining performances leaving an indelible mark on American filmmaking. Harnessing the actor’s power, one of Ezawa’s exacting paper cuts shows George pointing what appears to be a gun at his wife as she berates him off camera; a second work depicts the couple embroiled in a drunken, exhausting fight. Both works speak to the tenderness and terror of modern marriage. 
  • In his cut paper collage LYAM (2011), Ezawa draws from Alain Resnais’ 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad, a defining...
    Kota Ezawa

    LYAM, 2011

    Cut paper collage

    9.25 x 11.75 inches

    $3,500
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    In his cut paper collage LYAM (2011), Ezawa draws from Alain Resnais’ 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad, a defining work of French New Wave cinema that has been seducing and puzzling audiences for decades with its extraordinary mix of beauty and mystery. Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream gorgeously fuses the past and present with its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (actors Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like château they now find themselves wandering. In Ezawa’s evocative still, the character X (Albertazzi), poses in formal dress before the estate’s baroque gardens, casting a thousand-yard stare.
  • In his seminal 2005 series The History of Photography Remix, Ezawa appropriates some of the medium’s most canonical images, including...
    Kota Ezawa

    Self Portrait, 2011

    Cut paper collage

    12 x 10 inches

    $3,500
    Inquire
    In his seminal 2005 series The History of Photography Remix, Ezawa appropriates some of the medium’s most canonical images, including seminal works of art, potent photojournalistic moments, and technological advancements in the development of the medium. Each image is based on both historical imagery and the artist's own memory of the event. Now thrice removed from their original context, Ezawa encourages us to see these images anew, provoking a visceral response as if encountering them for the first time.
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