Tomoko Nakazato

Tomoko  Nakazato narrates the contemporary tales of human experiences through her animated ceramic sculptures.  Although Tomoko’s love for all things cute, animation, and West coast funk ceramics is evident in her sculptures, her artwork cannot be described in such simple terms. “Hello Kitty on acid“, “Goth Lolita with vengeance“, “Punk Bling Bling with consciousness”, “Surrealism with a rebel statement” may be the words used in effort to decipher  Tomoko’s cryptic visual language.  Nonetheless, however strange, her language is like a dialect rooted in the reality of her life.  She says, “ I feel as if I exist in a world that seems to be in a constant state of flux.  I perceive my surroundings as if it is a part of an ever-morphing entity, which is full of blinking visual “paw!”, the drips of fantastic plastic colors, and the glossy gobs of melting patterns and symbols. Such visual ‘blings’ are all advocating for temporary, disposable, and instant gratifications. “

As an introverted child who preferred being friends with the bands of staffed animals, Tomoko was immersed in the ultra materialistic urban life of Tokyo, Japan in 1980s. Then, in 1996, her life became a liberal cross-cultural immigrant, the hybrid of Japan- America in San Francisco, California. She has exhibited her artwork nation wide, and became an artist in resident in Hawaii and California as ways to connect with external world trough creativity. At anytime, however, her experiences of life profoundly were defined as of an individual, lost in a world, where popular culture, materialism and consumerism are the leading moral values destroying the life and natural environment of this planet to the points of no return.

There is a feeling of childlike playfulness, oddity, and enigma in her sculpture that her audience find familiar. But Tomoko delivers it with a cheek pinching sort of jaded mischievousness.  Fragility of cute pretense gets mocked by the crudeness or grossness the artwork also presents in itself.  This implosive self contradictions may be the delightful creative predicament of the materialistic world the artist exists, indulges, and finds herself trapped in.