Makoto Aida – b. 1965, Niigata, Japan. (Lives and works in Chiba, Japan)
Spanning the disciplines of painting, video, installation, and Japanese manga, Makoto Aida’s often outrageous imagination has made him one of the leading outliers to the consumer driven norms of artistic production in his native Japan. While much of Aida’s work is characterized by a dark cynicism, he also employs a lighter side drawing on low-brow humor in works that tackle culturally specific themes including parody, fear and absurdity. Each is handled with an assured understanding of traditions in painting and printmaking. Aida has had solo exhibitions at IBID Projects in London, Lisa Dent Gallery in San Francisco, and Andrew Roth, Inc. in New York. He has been included in such group shows as Berlin-Tokyo, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; The American Effect—Global Perspectives on the United States, 1990-2003, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan, International Center of Photography, New York.
