Marlene Dumas

"Feather Boa" and "Turkish Girl"

"Anger, sadness, bereavement, and love – these days we rely on photographs and movies to express such emotions with power and realism," Cape Town–born painter Marlene Dumas complains. "I want to give back to paintings these themes that were once the territory of painting."

Using Polaroids of friends and lovers as a starting point, Dumas creates colourful and stylish expressionist works that convey more potent moods and feelings than a mere lens is capable of. The 54–year–old painter, who is now based in Holland, often deals with pornographic and taboo subject matter. This exhibition at Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art will display 250 works, including her Strippinggirls series (2000), a work she created in collaboration with photographer Anton Corbijn.

To curry favour with the locals, she will also present a new work, Broken White (2006), based on a photograph by Nobuyoshi Araki.

C.B.Liddell
Japanzine
May 2007