Coconut Heads in the Museums

Coconut Heads in the Museums derived from Coconut Heads series which focuses on making associations between similar visual characteristics and invent various relationships between them. In this series, each painting depicts a continuous line made by correlating a group of artworks from each museum’s collection. It is a word association game-like system which extracts relatable elements without considering their artistic values or meanings.  The idea behind this series comes from my experience of visiting contemporary art exhibitions at museums in New York City with my mother while she was visiting me from Japan. Because of the language barrier and her lack of experience of being exposed to foreign cultures, she had difficulties in appreciating the artworks in a "traditional way”, which requires us to understand the context behind the artwork as the clue to sympathize with it. However, she enjoyed the visit as she picked up on some visual information that was familiar to her, such as a woman’s fashion in a painting, movie star portraits or daily commodities. This experience motivated me to experimentally create stories only with the visual information that the artworks provide.

Coconut Heads in Centre Pompidou 2018 76x50inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in Museo Reina Sofia 2018 76x50inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in Tate Modern 2018 76x50inch oil on canvas

    

Coconut Heads in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 2018 48x48inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in the MMK Museum fur Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main 2018 48x48inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in KUNSTMUSEUM Basel 2018 48x48inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in Moderna Museet 2018 48x48inch oil on canvas

 

Coconut Heads in MoMA 2017 50x76inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in Guggenheim Museum 2017 50x76inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in Metropolitan Museum 2017 52x76inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in Whitney Museum 2017 50x76inch oil on canvas

Coconut Heads in Brooklyn Museum   2017 50x50inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in New Museum 2017 50x50inch oil on canvas	Coconut Heads in Jewish Museum 2017 50x50inch oil on canvas