Kota Ezawa Launches New Publication

October 7, 2017

Kota Ezawa's new publication, titled The Crime of Art, surveys his career using crime as a topical lens. The book presents photographs and reproductions from Ezawa’s recent exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, and Amherst featuring remakes of paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. In addition, the book draws connections from his current project to other work by Ezawa from the early 2000s to the present that contemplate crime. Among them are his animated films The Simpson Verdict (2002) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (2005), as well as his ongoing drawing series The History of Photography Remix, which includes hand-drawn recreations of historic crime scene photography.

While focusing on a single subject, The Crime of Art brings attention to some of Ezawa’s key projects from the last fifteen years, and coincides with a solo exhibition of his work at SITE Santa Fe in 2017. The Crime of Art is published by Radius Books in association with SITE Santa Fe and Mead Art Museum.