Tetsumi Kudo – Cultivation (2019)

Louisiana poster with detail from the work, Buddha in Paris. Meditation between Programmed Future and Recorded Memory (1976), by the Japanese artist, Tetsumi Kudo, (1935-1990). The poster is from Louisiana's exhibition of Kudo's work, Cultivation, in 2019. Kudo has been almost forgotten, but is now attracting international attention again with his showdown with a world in ecological decay and a self-destructive humanity morbidly preoccupied with technology. A showdown that speaks right into our time.

Kudo was a radical and visionary outsider. By combining found materials and modeled elements into distinctive sculptures, Kudo anticipates many of the aesthetic approaches seen in contemporary art right now. And at the same time, he speaks directly and with great relevance into the cultural and political agendas of our time, regarding, for example, the environment and reproduction.

Kudo's work is clearly marked by growing up in post-war Japan in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But his approach to human self-destruction and ecological decay is both unsentimental and almost humorous in his absurd proposals for how new life can sprout and develop in defiance.

The exhibition poster is with a detail from Tetsumi Kudo: Buddha in Paris. Meditation between Programmed Future and Recorded Memory, 1976.


Private collection. ©Tetsumi Kudo / Adagp, Paris 2020 / VISDA