KAGO SHINTARO: UNSANITARY
2013, Culture Industries Association (CIA), Hong Kong
CIA is proud to present Kago Shintarō’s solo exhibition in Hong Kong, his very first show outside of Japan since his career began in 1988. Celebrated internationally and critically acclaimed, Shintarō’s prolific Manga art has graced the comic world with his unique touch based on a schizo-parano-maniac style, amplifying intense logic with blurred double vision of a world gone awry.
Kago’s diverse yet focused works often deal with ‘difficult’ subject matters where everyday norms are challenged, perverted, inversed and sometimes backward engineered, though one should not be easily mislead by his deliberate and generous employment of the grotesque, obscene, and other morally ambiguous images: The intentional provocation through the notion of the abject and abhorrence is itself the most powerful and direct emotional response to the human nature, as spoken in Sartre’s Nausea. It is in this respect that Kago Shintarō has indeed reaffirmed all of us the true state of the world that we are all so comfortably co-habiting in – one where ignorance prevails. Kago’s recognition with what will have the Norms turned away in disgust, is precisely what he will utilise in order to jump start the dormant, buried yet un-dead, now zombified majority that roams the face of the earth.
Shintarō’s paranoia-paradoxical recurring daydream-cum-nightmare imageries create a world of delusional logic yet filled with humorous elements that should not be confused with being simply satirical or ironic. He creates a world of short-circuitry that appears almost parallel to ours, but upon closer inspection, the rationale is fundamentally alienated to our everyday, ‘real’ world. It is such a line of thinking that could prompt a philosophical debate in regards to how Disneyland can really helps confirming the world we currently live in is actually the real world, or are we not setting up the alarm everyday so that we can all wake up in time to take the sleeping pill?