“We are not ‘Human Beings’ we are ‘Bread People”, the declaration made by
hundreds, if not thousands of people; who from Tokyo to Venice, from Penzance
São Paolo. Who have been transformed into moving sculptures by the Japanese
artist Tatsumi Orimoto, born in the Summer of 1946 at Kawasaki City
an industrial city which remained his home until February 2025.
The face of the Bread Man is obscured like a folkish icon who spoke to the
public without the need for the gallery labels; it is poetic on the level of
everyday madness. Last November for a New York Times article on the return of
white bread, Tatsumi Orimoto was commissioned to make three self portraits.
Dressed in a severe black jacket, a smart white shirt and tie; his face is obscured
by crowns of dough that emanated a cosmic chaos which he said defined his
life.
Tatsumi Orimoto originally thought he would be a painter and one the earliest
surviving works is a still life of a baguette. In 1969 Odai Orimoto, his mother
raised fees for studing painting in the USA at the California Institute of Art. In
1971 unable to tune into the West coast vibes he headed East for the more
cosmopolitan New York art scene. Studing at the Art Student League and by
1972 was a studio assistant to Nam Jun Paik. The Performance art he became
famous for internationally, was germinated in that ghostly topography of
downtown Manhattan which became part mythology. Telling stories of
providing food and water for the Coyote when Joseph Bueys came to New York
wrapped in felt blanket in 1974 and how he refused to sell the Broken Clocks
works exhibited at the Fluxus exhibition to its organiser Nam June Paik.
Without a private income Tatsumi Orimoto had worked in the famous
Manhattan outpost of the Takashimaya department store. It was a boom time
down time in a city on its knees; a scene of happenings in loft spaces and
derelict streets that transformed into stages for many of his early works, making
art out of the debris of consumer culture.
In 1976 he moved back to Japan with a head full of new styles in art, earning
money as a designer he and began to plan works in Japan and around the world
that followed the Fluxus method of low or no cost materials and a disregard for
the gallery as a space to make and share artworks.By 1979 the work had evolved and in particular the use of photography as the primary medium this was the beginning a series of works; Event Communication.
This method took Tatsumi Orimoto on journeys to the edge of art world where encounters and exchanges were exhibited in Japan and later internationally. With artworks such as Event Photo Indian With A Bracelet 1979, Philippines Wearing Bracelet 1981, Pull to Ear Japanese Wearing the Language (Words) 1979 -82 and Thai Living in the Mountains Wearing a Bracelet 1984.
These portraits are simultaneously formal, intimate and provocative; the artist
exhibiting subjects alongside cards containing minimal and prosaic data; such
as: name, occupation and site of the event; evoking taxonomy of early colonial
encounters. A style that focused on what would be later described as a
relational aesthetic, in which the interaction of others was fundamental to the
making of artworks.
Tatsumi Orimoto later became equally focused on the local, in particular the
home and neighbourhood shared with his mother Odai Orimoto and her
friends. To make such personal artworks requires a perspective that is
empathetic to the micro ecology of others. Traditional values inhabit an
indigenous habitat and Tatsumi Orimoto became increasingly interested in how
cultural values of Japanese society have changed through globalisation. The
increased discriminatory attitudes to ageing and disability became submerged
beneath economic success. For Tatsumi Orimoto the home shared with Odai
Orimoto became a site of exploration in which to document complex rituals of
being and belonging.
The series of images with car tyres and cardboard boxes produced with bribes
of expensive Sushi. The neighbours were surprised by suggestions of posing
with car tyres as necklaces, but agreed partly because Odai Orimoto was so
willing and she was their friend and her son was not crazy but an artist. This
style of art is like that, you stand in a big box, or you pose in a garden wearing
inner tubes on, international art becomes local art.
Primarily it was photography followed by film and video to create documents of
performances, whether this was with domestic animals or Odai Orimoto as an
artist he always preferred the rough and the uncut to the manicured edit or
special effects. These videos are currently on display at Welcome Back;
Yokohama Museum Of Art exhibition and featured in the prestigious Roppongi
Crossing: Coming & Going exhibition in 2022 at Mori Art Museum.Beethoven Mama is perhaps the most infamous,
Tatsumi Orimoto massages Odai Orimoto’s hair as they both listen to Beethoven’s 5th, becoming her carer since the late 1980s since the incremental mobility and memory loss. Becoming a muse with many dedicated artworks, such as Art Mama Diary (1998-2002) and others that were private such as the Postcards he would send to her
from around the world updating her on exhibitions and experiences. This ritual
became more stylised after she died when he continued to post with up to 100
cards to his home address for her ghost to read.
Odai Orimoto, together with brilliant long time collaborator, Noritosho Motoda
also feature as cameos in extensive works on paper. These were often quickly
produced in hotel suites, trains, planes and bars using pens, crayons and paint,
perhaps a little perverse they are still mesmerising. Ideas for performances and
everyday observations collide on two dimensional planes. Seldom seen outside
of Japan one of the most poignant and celebrated series of drawings are those
from the epic work documenting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in
March 2011.
The Skulls were drawn whilst taking a break from caring for Odai in a local
gambling office and drawn on the betting slips. First seen in 2014 as part of the
major retrospective of work Art X Life, curated for Kawasaki City Museum by
Masafumi Fukagawa and a delirious commentary and shared trauma. The bones
of bodies collected on the beaches after the great tsunami had struck, waves
and skulls being ancient subjects in Japanese art but with Tatsumi Orimoto they
take an ominous turn, recorded on the detritus where men like his father can
loose perspective.
Tatsumi Orimoto’s style of performance is impossible to initiate so it will
perhaps not have followers in any traditional sense, however he is hugely
popular with a new generation of Japanese artists who admire emotional
integrity and the synthesis of a myriad of media to tell contemporary everyday
stories.
In England there is Punch and Judy theatre similar to the dynamic Japanese
tradition for puppetry with origins in the canal filled city of Osaka . Often
supernatural in theme, Bunraku also known as Ningyo ̄ jo ̄ ruri, is a form in
which the puppeteer is visible on stage. Tatsumi Orimoto has made more than
fifty grotesque and brightly coloured finger dolls for improvised shows. These
normally included conversations with Odai Orimoto about art and money but
the themes were very flexible and could include the scandalous and unspeakable things that only puppets can say. That is the type of truth we seek in art, a truism hidden in plain sight.
In terms of reality perhaps the most radical work was, I Make up and Become
Art Mama in 2018. Tasumi Orimoto performed this twice, The Venice Biennial
for Venice Agendas and at his Tokyo Gallery Aoyama Meguro. Starting the event
sitting in a light day dress while a professional make up artist attended to hair
and maquillage, transforming a man into a woman. At the end of this
process with curled hair, lipstick, eyeliner and blush the artist was in full drag.
Not Kabuki Theatre but improvised performance of possession. Tatsumi
Orimoto spoke to his mother as if she was there while he moved around the
gallery pulling dramatic poses in the famous Big Shoes. The artist created a
transgressive space neither gendered or embodied but oscillating in a
performative catharsis.
Our final collaboration was the film Tatsumi Orimoto: A Cosmic Chaos that
won best short documentary at FAFF 2023. It was directed by David Bickerstaff
and it captures a spontaneous creativity and subversive charm which made him
one of the most loved artists to emerge from post atomic Japan.
We hope that the Art Mama Foundation that Tatsumi Orimoto established will
take forward such a glittering legacy of supporting emerging artists and speaking
for the disquieting, the different and the disenfranchised.
“I aspire to create art which is not perceived as art, with freer and freer ideas exploring more and more diverse materials. If viewers are surprised by my artwork as they never thought such an expression could be considered art, that means they fall right into my trap. Even with these kinds of eccentric artworks my tenderness and commitment oozes from my life.
While watching the great current of art history, diverse genres of expression such
as religious painting, court portraiture, impressionist painting and abstract
painting emerged, and the truth is that even artworks that were not accepted as
such at the time can eventually merge into the mainstream art history. Such a chaotic cosmos of the art world really fascinates me.” - Tatsumi Orimoto.