Roger Shimomura’s pulls no punches in “Stereotypes and Admonitions,” his current exhibition on display through March 27 at the Greg Kucera Gallery. This is Shimomura’s most autobiographical and angry body of work to date. Never before has the Seattle-born artist used his characteristic juxtapositions of American pop culture and traditional Japanese art historical imagery so effectively to explore a subject always present, but until recently, only suggested in his work. As I wrote two years ago in a review of “Scenes from an American Diary” at Bellevue Art Museum, Shimomura’s decision to take on racism by exploring painful personal experience has given his work a new power, significance and sense of urgency. As in “American Diary,” paintings are accompanied by extensive wall text providing details of the story. In many of these works, Shimomura conflates racist stereotypes to present racism as an historical continuum in American life. In one of these paintings, three slanty-eyed, buck-toothed and yellow skinned figures — reminiscent of the familiar WWII-era depictions of Japanese — sport long white beards and black turbans of Islamic holy men. Above them, a Kamikaze pilot flies overhead; a previous generation’s fear-inducing suicide-bomber. The best works in this show, however, are the ones drawn directly from Shimomura’s own life. There is a complete book of these paintings available at the gallery.
