Mami Kosemura's photographic and video reworkings of sumptuous 17th-century still lifes and animated 15th-century profile portraits are very postmodern in their focus on copying and re-examination of historically significant Western art.
Her 2018 digitally edited photograph "Banquet," for example, closely follows the composition of "Flowers and Still Life" by Flemish artist Cornelis de Heem (1631-95). In both pictures carnations, grapes, peaches and plums are heaped on a table, while a curl of lemon peel and a cherry, among other things, hang over the edge towards the viewer as a trompe l'oeil, seeming as though they are just about to break out of the picture plane.
Where still-life painters combined fruit, vegetables and flowers that could not normally be picked in the same season, and portrayed them together in an imaginary, but highly realistic pictorial space, Kosemura uses contemporary tools to achieve the same with photographic detail. Another instance of experimentation with a genre of painting that was simultaneously a celebration of proto-globalization but also a reminder of the evanescence of life, is the 2015 piece "Drop Off," a silent monochrome video projection that shows objects smashing to pieces on a dining table in slow motion.
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