Mark Kadota

I am a self-taught multi-media artist, working professionally since 1970.  I have taught art sporadically over my career at the de Young Museum Art School in San Francisco, California and the Honolulu Academy of Arts in Hawaii.  I have exhibited at the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, California.  Here in Hawaii my exhibitions include, the Hawaii State Museum,  the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Honolulu Museum, and the Bishop Museum in Hawaii.  In the Netherlands I have exhibited at Museum van Bommel van Dam in Venlo, the Thorn Museum in  Netherlands, the Den Bosch Museum, and the Gouvereur van de Provinci in Limburg.  Internationally I have exhibited at the Museum Het Toreke, Tienen, Belgium, Moscow State Darwin Museum, Moscow Russia, Museum of Art in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, Germany, ExTerasa Arte Actua Museum in Mexico City, and the Center of Contemporary Art in Tbilisi, Georga, The Micro Museum in Brooklyn, New York, the Tokyo Metropoplitan Art Museum in Japan, and many more museums and galleries world wide.  I was chosen to be one of six artists representing the United States for the exhibit at the Today Museum for the cultural exhibition in the Beijing Olympics in 2008.  In 2009 my artwork was included in the Rietveld Pavilion in the Venice Biennale. In 2011 my work was picked as 24 of the best video work for 2010 and was exhibited at the One Minuet Video and Film Festival in Aarau, Switzerland and in 2000 my artwork was exhibited at the London Biannual.

My main motivation to create artwork is to find universal languages, searching for common truths that unite rather than separate.  I feel that artwork, at its best, mirror society and our interior selves, raise questions, and present communication and reflection.  I try to make my messages human, poetic, inclusive, humorous, accessible and comprehensible to everyone.

I am mainly a conceptual artist who works in both traditional and nontraditional media to explore ideas.  The various media I work in are video, painting photography, installations, performance, movement, music, poetry, kinetic stage sets, sculpture, ceramics, 3D printing and film.  I tend to work in series.  I explore the concept through the series of work till I exhaust the idea.  Usually I move to the next concept and at times return to the former concepts with newfound ideas.

My artwork is in constant change.  I feel to live a fully creative life we must constantly critically examine our work.  We must attempt to discern where we have become stagnant and where we might explore new beginnings.  There can be no new growth if we do not stay open and risk vulnerability.  The predictability in any art form can be debilitating.

Mark Kadota