Izima Kaoru, who was born in Kyoto in 1954, has been working on “Landscapes with a Corpse” since 1993. This year he delivered the 44th series. The first book which contains series No. 01 to 20 appeared in 1999. In the meantime, Izima Kaoru’s works have been regularly presented at single exhibitions in his galleries in Cologne, London, New York and Munich, and on international artfairs in Paris, Brüssel, London, Cologne, Basel und Miami, accompanied by the now fourth book. At the present time his works can be seen at the exhibition “Tokyo-Berlin.Berlin-Tokyo” in the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin as well as at “Erblätterte Identitäten” (Foliated Identities) in the Stadthaus Ulm.
His work is virtually growing to a cyclopaedia in which the connections between the terms beauty, eroticism, violence, death, dream, disentanglement and phantasm are played through in manifold and almost inexhaustible variations. This inexhaustibility is partly due to the fact that the single series are generated congenially with the actresses and triggered off by the question “How would you like to die?”. From our western point of view, on the other hand, nothing would be considered more Japanese than this consequence of aesthetic persistence. For in such abundance, and with simultaneous recurrence, the individual expression and appearance melt to an allegory, the story of the unfortunate death becomes a parable.
It’s Izima Kaoru’s participation at the exhibition “Tokyo-Berlin…” that beautifully exemplifies how much value has meanwhile been attached to his work.