Co-sponsored by the Pomona College Museum of Art and the Department of Asian Languages and Literature
Performance artist and ordained Shingon Buddhist priest Hirokazu Kosaka will examine the permeable boundaries between creativity, nature, and meditation as expressed through the in-between space of the veranda, a space that is “not a Yes or a No, but infinite maybes.”
Hirokazu Kosaka is the Visual Arts Director at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. As a student at the Chouinard Art Institute, where he graduated with a BFA in painting in 1970, Kosaka began to explore the art of performance, looking toward artists such as Wolfgang Stoerchle, Allen Ruppersberg, William Leavitt and Chris Burden for inspiration. As a young artist, Kosaka also began to incorporate Eastern traditions in his art, drawing from his appreciation of the centuries-old traditions of Noh drama and Kabuki theater, his knowledge of the ground-breaking experimental art of Japan’s Gutai Group in the mid-1960s, as well as his own experience with Buddhist chanting and Zen archery. Today, Kosaka is known for his large-scale, performative pieces, which often use publicly accessible space as a platform for dance, performance, and visual art practice.