“Cataclysmic Microcosm” by Jave Yoshimoto

Cataclysmic Microcosm
Jave Yoshimoto

My work takes on the ephemerality of news and information and how the emotions we bring to each tragedy in the news cycle are swept away by the wave of information that floods the media. I address this social amnesia through my art with the work acting as a social memory for tragic events so quickly forgotten in our information age.

Employing images of the overwhelming power of the contemporary disasters humanitarian crisis to inspire empathy in the art works’ viewers. I use graphic illustrative images to draw in the audience for a closer view, while the finer details of the piece keep the audience fixated and allow them to feel immersed in the content of the subjects themselves.

I have researched my topics and themes by visiting and volunteering to help with the earthquake relief in Japan and Nepal, as well as the refugee crisis in Greece to collect first-hand, on the ground data.  These data, which varies from interviews and photographic documentations are used to build my compositional images, which at first becomes a painting paper, then re-drawn to create my current wood relief block sculptures.

This practice ultimately represent my belief that art should be accessible to its viewers through humanist tales of struggle and survival as played out in the prevalent social amnesia of the information age.

Exhibition Run: February 25 – April 4, 2019
Artist Talk: April 4, 4:30pm

Image: The Transference of Weight by Jave Yoshimoto; Gouache on paper, 2017, 18″ x 24″