Kota Ezawa Commission at San Francisco International Airport

October 26, 2017

Kota Ezawa has unveiled a new public artwork, Mondrian Meets the Beatles, at San Francisco International Airport. Part of Ezawa's Geometry of Rock and Roll series, the woodcut, wall-mounted sculpture combines a rendering of a photograph of The Beatles exiting an airplaine in San Francisco on their first US tour in 1964 with a version of Piet Mondrian’s Composition C (1935).

By combining an archival image with an abstract composition, the work attempts to free the photograph of its documentary status and to add a narrative to a set of primary color fields. The sculpture also imagines a meeting that never happened between a painter and a band that each revolutionized their respective fields.

Mondrian Meets the Beatles is on view in the International Terminal, Gate G100, and was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission.