Tetsumi Kudo: Cultivation

The eerily prescient work of a near-forgotten Japanese artist, whose 1960s and ’70s sculptures anticipate contemporary ecological anxieties Contemplating Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo’s (1935-90) work in the 21st century provokes a sense of the uncanny on multiple levels: grotesquely beautiful on their own, his abject sculptures seem to foretell today’s environmental concerns with their depictions of ecological decay. Born in Osaka, Kudo’s life was greatly impacted by the aftermath of the atomic bomb in 1945; this trauma compounded by the Vietnam War’s ever-present atmosphere of destruction led to a consistent focus on dystopia and decomposition in his work. Kudo’s fluorescent birdcages and blacklight terrariums are furnished with an assortment of sculptures and found objects: melted plastic flowers, colorful phallic chrysalises and dismembered resin body parts come together to convey a distinctly modern anxiety in regard to our ailing world. Kudo’s work does not intend to provide