ROGER SHIMOMURA
Great American Muse
May 8 - June 28, 2014
Great American Muse
May 8 - June 28, 2014
Great American Muse #14, 2013, Acrylic on Canvas, 24 x 24 inches
The Flomenhaft Gallery in Chelsea, New York, is proud and honored to announce Roger Shimomura’s exhibition, Great American Muse, on view May 8-June 28, 2014.
The show consists of 30 new paintings.
Shimomura wrote about this exhibit, “Central to my work is the manipulation of common objects into something other than what they seem. Recently, I became reacquainted with Great American Nude, a series of paintings by Tom Wesselmann. The interplay between the female figure, still life objects, and a familiar piece of contemporary art fascinated me as it set up multiple interpretations. By starting with Wesselmann’s premise of juxtaposing three separate motifs and by adding race and culture to the mix, the level of interpretation rose exponentially, each component adding its own history and viewpoint, resulting in endless potential for dialogue and debate.”
The show consists of 30 new paintings.
Shimomura wrote about this exhibit, “Central to my work is the manipulation of common objects into something other than what they seem. Recently, I became reacquainted with Great American Nude, a series of paintings by Tom Wesselmann. The interplay between the female figure, still life objects, and a familiar piece of contemporary art fascinated me as it set up multiple interpretations. By starting with Wesselmann’s premise of juxtaposing three separate motifs and by adding race and culture to the mix, the level of interpretation rose exponentially, each component adding its own history and viewpoint, resulting in endless potential for dialogue and debate.”
Roger Shimomura's Bio
Shimomura was born in Seattle in 1939. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Executive Order 9066. The policy authorized the imprisonment of over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry forcing them to relocate to 10 bleak internment camps. Although they were loyal American citizens living and working on the west coast, they were regarded as resident alien enemies and forced to give up all property and possessions. Shimomura, a third generation American, was only two years old at the time. He and his family were sent to Minidoka in Idaho where they lived behind a barbed wire fence for three years until World War II ended.
The impact of this experience on Shimomura’s life and career has been addressed in many successful exhibits: Return of the Yellow Peril, Minidoka, American Diary, Nikkei Story, An American Knockoff, and in his most recent participation in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC exhibition, Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter. The Smithsonian Museum of Art subsequently acquired one of his major works, Shimomura Crossing the Delaware, as well as a suite of prints, Minidoka Snapshots, both from 2010.
The Museum of Art at Washington State University is currently organizing a major travelling exhibition of Shimomura’s art from 1973 to the present and is scheduled to open in September 2014. It will be accompanied by a full color, 144 page book with essays, one by Anne Goodyear, Co-Director of Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Maine and formerly Associate Curator of the National American Portrait Gallery in DC. Other museums on the tour, thus far, are the Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington, and the Hallie Ford Museum in Salem, Oregon.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts has recently acquired Shimomura’s painting Rape of Nanking (1997). Sergio Bessa, Director of Curatorial and Education Programs at the Bronx Museum wrote, “Roger Shimomura is well known for a haunting series of works that delve into his early memories of being in a concentration camp in Idaho with his family. Those works tell a story about America that stuns us even today, about citizens being segregated on the basis of their ethnic ancestry. But Shimomura’s critique of contemporary culture and politics is deeper and broader, and it often reaches out to art history to address prickly topics. A great example of his strategy is the five-part work on canvas in the Bronx Museum’s permanent collection. Titled The Rape of Nanking, the canvas mixes references to Japanese erotic prints (Ukiyo-e) and manga comics, to Chinese Mao-era propaganda and American pop to tell of the shameful episode during World War II.”
Shimomura received a B.A. degree from the University of Washington, Seattle, and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University, New York. He has had over 130 solo exhibitions of paintings and prints, as well as presented his experimental theater pieces at such venues as the Franklin Furnace, New York City, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. He is the recipient of more than 30 grants, four of which are National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Painting and Performance Art. Shimomura has been a visiting artist and lectured on his work at more than 200 universities, art schools, and museums across the country. In 1999, the Seattle Urban League designated a scholarship in his name that has been awarded annually to a Seattle resident pursuing a career in art. In 2002 he received the College Art Association Distinguished Body of Work Award. The following year he delivered the keynote address at the 91st annual meeting of CAA in New York City. In 2003 he was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting Award. In 2006, he was accorded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the School of Arts & Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, and five years later was one of 50 alumni to be presented with the “150th Anniversary Timeless Award”. A past winner of the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award (2008) he was designated the first Kansas Master Artist and the same year was honored by the Asian American Arts Alliance, N.Y.C. as "Exceptional People in Fashion, Food & the Arts." In 2011 Shimomura was designated a United States Artist Fellow in Visual Arts and the next year delivered the commencement address to Garfield High School, Seattle, his alma mater.
Shimomura began teaching at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS in 1969. In the fall of 1990, Shimomura held an appointment as the Dayton Hudson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. During his teaching career at the University of Kansas he was the first faculty member ever to be designated a University Distinguished Professor (1994), receive the Higuchi Research Prize (1998) and the Chancellor’s Club Career Teaching Award (2002). In 2004 he retired from teaching and started the Shimomura Faculty Research Support Fund, an endowment to foster faculty research in the Department of Art.
Shimomura is in the permanent collections of over 90 museums nationwide. His personal papers and letters are being collected by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
The impact of this experience on Shimomura’s life and career has been addressed in many successful exhibits: Return of the Yellow Peril, Minidoka, American Diary, Nikkei Story, An American Knockoff, and in his most recent participation in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC exhibition, Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter. The Smithsonian Museum of Art subsequently acquired one of his major works, Shimomura Crossing the Delaware, as well as a suite of prints, Minidoka Snapshots, both from 2010.
The Museum of Art at Washington State University is currently organizing a major travelling exhibition of Shimomura’s art from 1973 to the present and is scheduled to open in September 2014. It will be accompanied by a full color, 144 page book with essays, one by Anne Goodyear, Co-Director of Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Maine and formerly Associate Curator of the National American Portrait Gallery in DC. Other museums on the tour, thus far, are the Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington, and the Hallie Ford Museum in Salem, Oregon.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts has recently acquired Shimomura’s painting Rape of Nanking (1997). Sergio Bessa, Director of Curatorial and Education Programs at the Bronx Museum wrote, “Roger Shimomura is well known for a haunting series of works that delve into his early memories of being in a concentration camp in Idaho with his family. Those works tell a story about America that stuns us even today, about citizens being segregated on the basis of their ethnic ancestry. But Shimomura’s critique of contemporary culture and politics is deeper and broader, and it often reaches out to art history to address prickly topics. A great example of his strategy is the five-part work on canvas in the Bronx Museum’s permanent collection. Titled The Rape of Nanking, the canvas mixes references to Japanese erotic prints (Ukiyo-e) and manga comics, to Chinese Mao-era propaganda and American pop to tell of the shameful episode during World War II.”
Shimomura received a B.A. degree from the University of Washington, Seattle, and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University, New York. He has had over 130 solo exhibitions of paintings and prints, as well as presented his experimental theater pieces at such venues as the Franklin Furnace, New York City, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. He is the recipient of more than 30 grants, four of which are National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Painting and Performance Art. Shimomura has been a visiting artist and lectured on his work at more than 200 universities, art schools, and museums across the country. In 1999, the Seattle Urban League designated a scholarship in his name that has been awarded annually to a Seattle resident pursuing a career in art. In 2002 he received the College Art Association Distinguished Body of Work Award. The following year he delivered the keynote address at the 91st annual meeting of CAA in New York City. In 2003 he was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting Award. In 2006, he was accorded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the School of Arts & Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, and five years later was one of 50 alumni to be presented with the “150th Anniversary Timeless Award”. A past winner of the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award (2008) he was designated the first Kansas Master Artist and the same year was honored by the Asian American Arts Alliance, N.Y.C. as "Exceptional People in Fashion, Food & the Arts." In 2011 Shimomura was designated a United States Artist Fellow in Visual Arts and the next year delivered the commencement address to Garfield High School, Seattle, his alma mater.
Shimomura began teaching at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS in 1969. In the fall of 1990, Shimomura held an appointment as the Dayton Hudson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. During his teaching career at the University of Kansas he was the first faculty member ever to be designated a University Distinguished Professor (1994), receive the Higuchi Research Prize (1998) and the Chancellor’s Club Career Teaching Award (2002). In 2004 he retired from teaching and started the Shimomura Faculty Research Support Fund, an endowment to foster faculty research in the Department of Art.
Shimomura is in the permanent collections of over 90 museums nationwide. His personal papers and letters are being collected by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.