Shozo Shimamoto, do something interesting, see something odd (book)

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Shozo Shimamoto, do something interesting, see something odd (book) by De Buck Gallery (David De Buck, Rachel Vancelette, Kathryn Mc Sweeney and Charlotte Panis). This catalog was published on the occasion of the exhibition Shozo Shimamoto: do something interesting, see something odd, at Galerie De Buck, from November 2016 to January 2017. 55 pages. 2016. Softcover. Like new condition. English edition.

Do Something Interesting, See Something Odd, delves ever deeper into Shimamoto’s groundbreaking career trajectory. The exhibition provides insight into the maturation of Shimamoto’s style and technique. Highlights include examples from his trademark Bottle Crash series, in which the artist created lively, abstract paint-splattered works by ceremonially throwing bottles and other pigment-filled containers onto otherwise blank canvases, emphasizing the innovative methods based on performance and energy, visually documented, in the works with which Shimamoto approached his art during his long career.

Works such as Untitled (Ping Pong) from 2011, which incorporates islands of ping pong balls on the surface of the canvas, illustrate a playfulness and a desire to push the boundaries of what is possible in art that embodies the very spirit of Gutai, and of Shimamoto’s work and life.

Following an encounter with elder artist Jiro Yoshihara in his youth, Shozo Shimamoto quickly became an integral member of Yoshihara’s Gutai Group, the key art movement of reconstructing postwar Japan. Yoshihara’s call to do what has never been done in art inspired Shimamoto and his younger compatriots to experiment and thus create revolutionary works of art that, in many ways, are reminiscent of the performative Happenings that began to appear in the United States and Europe during this period: the same period of the 1950s and 1960s. After Gutai disbanded in the early 1970s, Shimamoto became a pioneer of the Mail Art movement, as well as an ambassador of peace, even being recognized as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.

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