Artist's Statement

Swiss-German Mario A. became the first so-called "Japanese" artist with non-Asian heritage in the history of Japanese contemporary art. Widely recognized as the most challenging and provocative artist of his generation in Japan, his influence can be traced to a range of fields including politics, news, theater, film, photography, fashion, advertising, underground culture, literature and artist patronage.


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more on www.marioa.com

« Japanese Anime Love » (2004)

... we human beings constantly tend to apply our own artificial images of nature: in the same way, we try to seize our own culture’s outcome by projecting stereotyped images onto it. Would someone unaware of that be able to correctly represent a culture of the Other? It is not surprising if a similar question arises especially when the idea of “cuteness” comes to the fore in Mario A.’s new work. Because the “cuteness” apparent in Japanese Anime Love (2000-) is nothing else than a new form of exoticism that the worldwide art market today defines, evaluates and promotes as typically Japanese.

This hard question is not specific to Mario A.. To put it in an extreme way, the same question applies to anybody coming into contact with a foreign culture. Then do we have to tolerate the imagery projected by exoticism? Does it mean that we are covered by the veil of exoticism from the start? Mario A. does not seem to be an exception since, instead of resisting exoticism, he presents works that promote it. But he does put up a brave challenge against this trap. In the same way a parasite supplants its target, he reverses exoticism by willingly diving into the imagery of Japonism and acting as if he is trapped by exoticism.

Japonism was born under the European hegemony that exercises and dominates its imagery one-sidedly and confined Japan, its very object, in a passive role. Mario A. deconstructs this schema with the parasite strategy. By doing so, a new relationship differing from exoticism emerges between his native European culture and his adopted (Japanese) culture. The two cultures neither amalgamate nor commingle.

from: Kentaro Ichihara "Mario A. An Artist of Japan as an Eternal Revolutionary" in Mario A. The Japanese Artist

« The World Is Beautiful » (2004)

Bijutsuko (Child of the Arts), a Japanese girl, leaves the temple of Sanzen in Kyoto to embark towards Tokyo. It is at the same time a physical and metaphorical course through Japan. If, at the beginning of the voyage, she still poses as on Japanese postcards under cherry trees in bloom at Inokashira Park, at the end she’s in a hotel room of, and has switched her traditional clothing for a Western style. For the series « The World Is Beautiful », Mario A. borrowed the title of Albert Renger-Patzsch’s book « Die Welt ist schön », one of the most representative works of German Neue Sachlichkeit movement (New Objectivity from the end of the 20’s). Though, Mario A. decided to give up with the black and white used by Renger-Patzsch (as in « ma poupée japonaise ») and chose colour photography for a « new objectivity in a new context ». Thus, he shows his point of view on Japanese culture, which is also a questioning on the possibility of representing it beyond the exotic stereotypes built by the Occident. For Mario A.: « an idea takes over the form - the artificial theory as radical anti-aesthetics’ version must be pushed ad absurdum. »

« HEDGE OIL PAINTINGS » (2003 - )

"They think we're crazy," says art advisor Lowell Pettit. "We'll be in some dumpy gallery on the far west side of Manhattan, and they can't buy any of the paintings!" That's led to some nasty spats, such as the one between hedgie Dan Loeb and gallery owner Barbara Gladstone. (He felt he had been promised a Matthew Barney photo; she disagreed.) Most galleries say that the ideal buyer isn't the highest bidder but rather someone who will hold onto the work for a long time, then donate it to a museum.

What's going on in recent art-market hype? Let's look at another quote, this time by Charlie Finch from Artnet Magazine: "Huge amounts hedged on art made last week are the symptom of a new art-world dynamic, the living buyers grasping at totems of life from living artists. "Like the blackest hole, this behavior must collapse upon itself, because, as the critic Peter Schjeldahl told me the other night, ’The only time is the present.’ Parse that present like a hedged derivative into minutes, seconds and milliseconds and pretty soon, like the diminished spiritual significance of overpriced art, nothing is there."

Although the beginning of Mario A.'s amazing body of work called HEDGE OIL PAINTING was perhaps marginalized and undervalued in 2003, his work since then furthers an important model for later generations of artists. This is due to his multivalent approach, as well as his focus on the issues of the contemporary art market and the problematic deconstruction of respect towards artists in general and their utopian intentions.

What was Mario A.'s motivation in creating HEDGE OIL PAINTING with the obvious influence of the American Psycho aesthetic? He should be familiar with the period when the oil painting genre had fallen drastically in critical estimation, buried in the annals of art history. Joseph Beuys famously said that art students already make their first mistake on the way to becoming an artist by buying stretcher frames. Nevertheless, recent auction prices have cemented the preference of collectors for canvas over prints, a trend clearly seen with the works of Andy Warhol. Canvas remains the ultimate fetish as a carrier of the image.

As a whole, Mario A.'s ongoing series of works doesn't represent a discourse on painting, whereas his choice of words implements a strategic message of sublime critique on Wall Street society and financial behavior. The artist's attitude seems to escape any wish in terms of painting technique or ability, instead being characterized by his interest in the freedom to challenge aesthetics, especially in the area of perception by the art viewer. The atmospheric quality to Mario A.'s paintings, with their sometimes sumptuous treatment of the surface, alludes to the seriousness of his articulation with the material oil. Like Jackson Pollock, his painting style obviously charges the imperfect, the incomplete. He succeeds in implementing the abstract complexity of amorphy, and is restricted only by the physical limitations of the medium. By signing with an anarchy logo, he infiltrates the system of structured, beloved habitation.

We can approach these pictures on different levels: scan them and be left with a glimmer of uncertainty, or cross-reference all the images and texts to find a thorough critique of the politics of representation. A mastering gaze and, as we engage with Mario A.'s suggestive work, we realize our complicity in the mechanisms of control and repression he uses. However, few will recognize his critical revision of the use of Karl Rosenkranz' philosophical work, or the resistance to the widespread acceptance that collectors should function as the patrons of art per se. The initial role of HEDGE OIL PAINTING involves the embodiment of a complex response against the comfortable aesthetic experience by gradually leaning towards shapelessness. A paradigm shift with a subversive character for the fetish of the art market, the work called Oil Painting on Canvas, created for stressed collectors such as hedge fund managers who would probably not accept the complex, challenges the attitude of arte povera artists.

Certainly, it would be wrong to see only the conceptuality of Duchamp and Dada (or the period generally) in Mario A.'s paintings. His critique of art is extended, and certain conceptional strategies are established in the advent of his amorphous painting, much like the anti-painting of Francis Picabia. Could we analyze this deployment of outrage in the same way as when the crisis in picture art reached its logical conclusion in Russia in 1914 when Kasimir Malevich painted a black square? Mario A.'s pluridisciplinary practice is rooted in an art characterized by honesty and love towards his colleagues, whom he respects. On the other hand, he strives to defend freedom of expression and the evolutionary process of creating even more challenging works of art without compromise.

« ma poupée japonaise » (2002)

Tokyo 2004, Museum of Contemporary Art, « Dolls of Innocence », 45.000 visitors were attracted and astonished by the 38 images of Mario A.’s « ma poupée japonaise » series. If Mario A's Japanese doll looks disturbingly real, that's because she is, wrote Monty Monty diPietro in Japan Times. First images of « ma poupée japonaise » show an apparently dismembered model (Sachiko Hara) lying in a big suitcase, eyes closed. When she awakens, Hara is dressed in a schoolgirl's uniform and taken out for a drive in a convertible through the streets of Berlin, and later to a café. The whirlwind tour also takes Hara to Tokyo, where she is installed in the famous « Matsuya » Ginza department-store window and laid on a love-hotel bed, all the while with a wooden smile on her clean, white face. Then Hara gets depressed, and finally becomes hysterical. Now there are dark circles under her eyes, and even a trip to a Nagano onsen does not seem to improve her temperament. Finally she is chucked into a pool of water, and sinks peacefully to the bottom. This work is a cross-cultural homage to Hans Bellmer, a Surrealist who fled Nazis’ Germany with a suitcase containing one of the anatomically correct young female dolls he crafted over the course of his truly weird life. Mario says he was inspired to undertake the current project by a suitcase he found in a Berlin market, a big, old bag that suggested Bellmer's own travel. « ma poupée japonaise » is also a metaphor for Mario's relationship with Hara, he was once romantically involved with.

« Maurizio Cattelan », from: « 01.09.01.-11. death of www.mauriziocattelan.net » (2002)

« Maurizio Cattelan » is a unique sculpture that has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo and at the Berlin Biennale (in 2006). On April 1st 2002, Mario A. sent an e-mail with the obituary announcement: « Maurizio Cattelan is dead ». Although quickly detected, the joke succeeded in plunging the art world for a brief moment, into big confusion.
Mario’s approach is the same as the « parasite », which would try, by adoration of the Other and by identification, to finally take its place.
The body of work « 01.09.01.-11. death of www.mauriziocattelan.net » falls under the new context of September 11th 2001’s immediate future and World Trade Center attacks. Mario A. leaves private sphere to enter political and social one. Importance of the identity and origins of the artist (« ROBERTO » Rome - Berlin - Tokyo) is fundamental in understanding his work.

« picabia.com / N.R.P. (New Radical Painting)» (2006)

« Picabia.com » (2000 - …) project consists in imitating Duchamp’s ready made, by signing with the name of 20th century Dada artist, Francis Picabia, a painting, adding « .com ». Raising the problems of copyright, parasite action of Mario A. reverse the master/slave relation. It also settles the basis of a new radical and scandalous critic aiming to abolish the foundations of contemporary art .
For « la donna è mobile », the artist decided to put on unlimited silent auction the signed painting and to transfer the integrality of the amount of money to a charity, the certificate being a testimonial of the piece. Copyright as well as resale royalty are in the middle of the questions raised by the project.