Artists | MAKI Gallery | MAKI

Born in Tochigi, Japan in 1972, Satoru Tamura began his career as an artist after graduating from the University of Tsukuba in 1995. His works utilize electricity, essential to modern civilization and a key part of the social infrastructure. At times, electricity powers a rotating crocodile, at others, it transforms into a measuring device that quantifies beauty, and at still others, it lights a lamp through the placement of positive and negative electrodes within a hair’s breadth of each other. His works, large-scale “devices” that are reminiscent of amusement parks, overflow with an irony that might make us want to murmur “So what?” in spite of ourselves. They embody and express what the artist elucidates as his “desire to be free from the meanings, settings and functions that materials and forms possess.”
Electricity has become so deeply embedded in our daily lives and in industry that we now see it as a given. Should a blackout occur, we finally recognize how reliant we have become on electricity. Out of this most essential of resources to modern society, with touches of cynical humor, the artist creates artworks that are completely useless and unproductive as objects. His works are the epitome of fine art, which admits of no other purpose except its being viewed. Through this, they present a warning to a society in which utility is the sole priority.
Tamura’s recent solo exhibitions include Aimless Machine, DH Neology (Tainan, 2024); Hi, Kumi. Hi, Mike., North Gallery at Plaza North (Saitama, 2024); Becoming 1 Ton, Tamura Satoru, Tochigi City Art Museum (Tochigi, 2022); Don’t Ask Why the Crocodiles Spin, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2022); and Spinning Crocodiles, Tamura Satoru, The National Art Center, Tokyo (Tokyo, 2022). He has participated in group exhibitions at such institutions as the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and Busan Museum of Art. The artist has also received numerous awards, including the International Light Art Award: First Prize (2017), The 12th Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art Special Prize (2009), Philip Morris K.K. Art Award 2002: The First Move P.S.1 Art Award Special Prize (2002), and the KIRIN CONTEMPORARY AWARD Encouragement Prize (1999).