Roger Shimomura: Minidoka on My Mind

March 6, 2009–April 18, 2009

Untitled

[LONG]Minidoka is Shimomura's fourth series of paintings about the internment experience of the 120,000 American citizens and residents of Japanese descent who were held under military guard after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Shimomura's clean, flat style, drawn from American comic books and Japanese ukiyo-e, draws viewers in with its pop art appeal, before confronting them with bold, pointed tableaux of racism and ignorance.

Local IQ – Artist Finely Details Dark U.S. chapter

The only two lithographs in Minidoka on My Mind, “American Guardian” and “Mix and Match 1,” somehow capture the feeling that emanates from the entire collection, which, with these two exceptions, features exclusively acrylics on canvas. The clean lines and evidently deliberate placement of details — shadows, creases in clothing, facials lines and expressions — […]

Santa Fe Reporter – Camp Legends

The bold colors, clean lines and graphic novel styling of roger Shimomura’s paintings draw the viewer in with their cheery pop-art façade. When the viewer considers the paintings’ subjects, however a more sinister focus emerges. Shimomura spent three years of his young life in Minidoka, a Japanese-American internment camp in Idaho, during World War […]

Albuquerque/Journal North – Forced to Remember

Most of us can’t retrieve memories of events that occurred before the age of 3, and many of us don’t remember much before the age of 5. Psychologists cal this “infantile or childhood amnesia,” and whatever the cause (there are several theories); it is part of human experience that we retain few, if any […]

Santa Fe New Mexico Pasatiempo – Their Own Private Idaho

In a work titled American Guardian, a heavily armed soldier, portrayed in jet-black silhouette , keeps vigilant duty in a guard tower. He watches below—in a space between tarpaper barracks enclosed by high barbed-wire fences is the lone object of his attention: a little boy on a tricycle. “That could be me,” […]

Art Ltd. – Roger Shimomura: Minidoka on my Mind

SEATTLERoger Shimomura: “Minidoka On My Mind” at Greg Kucera Gallery Roger Shimomura’s series of paintings on the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, “Minidoka on My Mind,” won’t open in New York until May, at the Flomenhaft Gallery, but Greg Kucera Gallery debuted the series in Seattle late last year. The 30 paintings and […]

Minidoka Mindscapes

“MINIDOKA MINDSCAPES” To view Roger Shimomura’s art is an exciting, even dangerous experience – for his work is provocative, jarring, and vigorously challenges our notions of history, ethnic images, popular culture, and American ideals. In “Minidoka on My Mind,” he takes us head-on into the racial conflicts of World War II and the unjust imprisonment […]