E’wao Kagoshima
Deconstructed Bodies
April 24—June 6, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, April 24, 6—8 pm
E'wao Kagoshima, Untitled, c. 1976-1980
Mixed media on paper, 30 x 22 inches / 76.2 x 55.9 cm
Ulterior Gallery is pleased to present Deconstructed Bodies, E’wao Kagoshima’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, opening April 24. Following Kagoshima’s institutional exhibition with the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) in New York last year, Animated Minds, this exhibition brings forward lesser-known works by Kagoshima to the contemporary discourse.
The exhibition features Kagoshima’s mixed-media drawings and collage works from the late 1970s and early 1980s, created a few years after his move from Tokyo to New York in 1976. His experiences in the city had a fundamental effect on him as he established his practice. The selection focuses on Kagoshima’s interests in figuration as a conduit to introspection. Through surrealistic imagery and ideas inspired by the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, he developed depictions of the human body in states of flux—disintegrating, transforming, and reforming.
Kagoshima’s mixed-media drawings imagine the figure as broken, splayed, and recomposed, morphing into cyborgian articulations of the human form. In Untitled, 1976-1980 (image above), he depicted a figure with bandaged arms and legs in casts, clinging to crumbling stone. Yet the figure remains suspended in ambiguity: it is unclear whether he/she is climbing upward or falling. The defenseless face can be read in multiple ways, functioning like a Noh mask whose expression shifts depending on the action and context of the play, and how it’s activated.
The collage works highlight Kagoshima’s ingenuity in handling diverse materials, vivid graphic sensibility, and a sharp sensitivity to imagery. Some incorporate images of male bodies sourced from vintage gay erotica magazines, a reflection of Kagoshima’s time living in the West Village in NYC, while others reduce the figure to drawn or painted fragments that interact with cut paper forms. In one example, he includes a fragment of Japanese: “A work of art is a form of cutting-edge, whether large or small …” (芸術作品は、形の大小を問わず一種の先端的…). Indeed, this work in a modest size demonstrates his morphological ambition that characterizes his oeuvre from this period.
E'wao Kagoshima, Untitled, 1981
Mixed media on paper, 12 x 9 in (30.5 x 22.9 cm)
Kagoshima’s gesture—cutting, unfurling and peeling back sections so that the pictorial matrix merges with the underlying support—is the material that makes these inventive collage works intimate, vulnerable, and strikingly genuine. In his 1981 collages, the source material he used become increasingly more figurative, perhaps inspired by his discovery of American popular culture in the printed form, especially magazines. The density of his earlier abstractions is dramatically eased and a complex and enigmatic dialogue between human bodies and other iconographies emerges.
The human body in Kagoshima’s 1981 works—dissected, assembled, and at times interrupted—function as scaffolds through which he inserts imagery juxtaposing objects and diagrams. The resulting figurative composites are artificially situated within a new environment. Echoing his personal experience as an artist in a new environment, the deconstructed bodies of this exhibition embrace change and mutability through material and visual contradiction.
E'wao Kagoshima (b. 1945) is a Japanese-born, New York-based artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, and collage. He has presented solo exhibitions at Nagai Gallery, Tokyo (1976); the New Museum, New York (1983); Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York (1997, 2008); Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2016); The Box, Los Angeles (2018); and Greenspon Gallery, New York (2018). His works have been featured in exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1982); White Columns, New York (2011); SculptureCenter, New York (2013); the Jewish Museum, New York (2014); the Baltic Triennial at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2018); and MoMA PS1, New York (2021). Most recently, in 2025 he was given a retrospective at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York. His works are in the collections of the Asian American Art Centre, New York; the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, Los Angeles; the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; and the Zuzeum Art Centre, Riga. Ulterior Gallery will also present a solo booth of Kagoshima's works at the upcoming art fair, NADA New York 2026 from May 13-17, 2026, in the TD Spotlight section curated by Anthony Elms, the Artistic Director at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA.