TANA
Gallery Bookshelf
TOKYO | KANDA
| 110204 | LG Williams Salaryman / Superman 2011.02.04 (Fri) - 2011.02.07 (Mon) |
TANA Gallery Bookstore is please to present Salaryman / Superman an exhibition and new artwork by LG Williams / The Estate Of LG Williams.
The golden age of comics and magna has just begun, and there is so much more to this world ahead. The recent exhibition Superman/Salaryman by LG Williams and The Estate of LG Williams at TANA Gallery Bookshelf in Tokyo, Japan, from February 4 to February 7 brings together a unique art installation featuring the ultimate pop culture hero, Superman, by way of his hard-working, signature alter-ego, the ultimate workerman, commonly referred to in Japan as Salaryman. This remarkable, stoic exhibition meshes worldly and otherworldly powers and occupational commitment and fashion (Salaryman's shirt, shoes, socks, pants, t-shirt, tie, wallet, jacket, and overcoat) with a sense of duty and never-ending officework that leads the viewer, ultimately, to a truer understanding into the nature of art and human experience.
This is part of Williams' global call to "superhero comic consciousness" that, observes Tokyo Weekender art critic LG Williams, "transcends religious and national boundaries to infect us with do-gooder inclinations while still letting us delight in violent retribution against imagined villainy."
Connecting the dots from exhausted working warriors and Buddhist figurines to modern-day superheroes, Williams analyzes archetypes like the angry young man (Wolverine), the avenging orphan (Batman), the dual personality (Superman) and other modern derivatives like Dirty Harry and Rambo. Not surprisingly, super-heroines have struggled for decades to achieve the popularity of their male counterparts. Powerful women are threatening whether drawn or born, concludes Williams, and until the 1990s advent of Buffy and Xena, Wonderwoman was a lonely lady at the top. With humor and a touch of comic exhibition hyperbole, the author capably mines the genre's cultural morphologies and the societal changes it reflects - a subject largely overlooked by art anarchists, contemporary pop psychologists and failed academics. While this psychological journey through comic hero history can seem reductive at times with page-filler statements like "Achieve Immortality Through Superheroes," the exhibition, like the escapist but enduring media it chronicles, proves an illuminating testimony.
Related Event
2011.02.04 (Fri) 20:00-
OPENING PARTY
DJ: Nothto
(a.k.a Takefumi Naoshima @ Encadre _ http://tanzaqueee.blogspot.com/)
| Appx |
LG Williams / The Estate Of The LG Williams held the four-day exhibition Salaryman / Superman over the weekend in February, filling the space with salaryman clothes and belongings on Friday and with nothing on Monday. Salaryman/Superman, the twofold symbol of never-ending reproduction of masculinity, claimed their presence through their absense alone.
Opening on Friday. The superman had flown away.
Closing on Monday. The salarymand had gone out.
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