Curator: Begovich Gallery Director, Mike McGee & Amena Elmekhgiange

About the Exhibition

Masami Teraoka is a celebrated Japanese American artist who is best known for his paintings that adeptly simulate traditional Japanese pictorial imagery and techniques while engaging ideas about Western ethos. During his more than five decades long career, Teraoka has engaged issues such as Western obsession with commercialization, AIDS awareness, eroticism, globalization, politics, abuse in the Catholic Church, and the plight of the Pussy Riot Girls. His art is always elegant and meticulously crafted with an intensive attention to detail. His subject matter is in turns poignantly serious and playfully humorous. He was born in 1936, in Onomichi, Hiroshima Japan. After receiving a BA in aesthetics and art history in Japan, Teraoka moved to Los Angeles and earn a BFA and MFA from Otis Institute of Art, completing his studies in 1968. He has been the subject of more than seventy one-person exhibitions. His work is in more than fifty public collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Smithsonian Institution; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Tate Modern; and the Walker Art Center.  This exhibition will focus on the Japanese influences in Teraoka’s work by exhibiting his drawings and paintings alongside examples of historical Japanese prints and paintings. The Begovich Gallery will produce a publication to accompany this exhibition.