MISAKO & ROSEN is pleased announce our exhibition with Naotaka Hiro “Wrong Person”, October 27 to November 23. Hiro was born in Osaka in 1972. He received an undergraduate degree from UCLA, Los Angeles in 1997 and subsequently received an MFA from CALARTS. Since the 1990’s, Hiro has been based in Los Angeles. Hiro’s recent solo exhibitions include “Knows Nothing” (MISAKO & ROSEN, 2007) and “Naotaka Hiro” (The Box, Los Angeles, 2008)

The foundation of Hiro’s work in general and the present exhibition is a concept of the unknown- world of the artist’s body; that which he is unable to see and thus is unable to confirm. For his first exhibition with MISAKO & ROSEN, “Knows Nothing”, Hiro attempted to reconstruct his head utilizing a human skull and rice. Hiro also exhibited a series of photo-collage works titled “Ass Fall” (2004-2007), which pictured a mythical region discovered by Western explorers; a composite landscape comprised of land and an image of the artist’s own ass. In all of these works the dilemma of the unknowability of his body serves as a creative point of departure; a place (unknown, blindness, awe) from which his imagination may create. This theme is further explored in the present exhibition “Wrong Person”.

The sculpture “Mt. Sweet Honey” is the result of Hiro casting his own ass in bees wax. As both the mold and the final sculpture were created solely by Hiro, himself, in his studio, the resulting representations are necessarily distorted.

The film work “Night and Fog, Yellow Volcano” utilizes a similar technique as “Mt. Sweet Honey”; Hiro’s ass mold, covered in bees wax, serves as the film’s set. Just as in the experiments of “Ass Fall”, where Hiro’s ass was used as a prompt for his imagination, in “Mt. Sweet Honey” Hiro further explores the unknown region of his own body; however, this time Hiro is not working with a found- image but rather using his own body and his own filmed explorations as a starting point. Of this work Hiro says, ” I have a camera in my hand. Through my open legs I try to film my ass. My position is unbalanced and my back is sore. I realize a nearly impossible form and finally am successful. The view which I capture is midnight. A yellow mountain shining. This mountain releases a smell of sweet honey. An endless eruption…”

This second exhibition by Naotaka Hiro at MISAKO & ROSEN is titled “Wrong Person” and includes work in the media of sculpture, film and painting.

Naotaka Hiro’s statement for “Wrong Person”:

At the start of this year I created a series of landscape paintings whose image was formed by focusing on an expanse of body. A white lake of sperm or milk…A snake in the form of a penis wrapping around a mountain…A mound of eyes as ground…Roots like an ever regenerating finger which when cut will re-grow. A volcano in the shape of an ass; a volcano continuously releasing gas. This landscape comprised the myth or narrative which I will present; this is also a storyboard or scenario for a film. For the present exhibition I use one scene from the larger story, the “ass volcano”.

The title “Wrong Person” is derived from a body in parts – from a third-person point of view of my own body. “Oh no! This is not my asshole! This is the wrong person, isn’t it?”

Naotaka Hiro