Robert Longo has long turned the visual noise of contemporary life into images of monumental intensity. Best known for his hyperreal charcoal drawings that magnify the political, cultural and emotional charge of mass-media imagery, the New York-based artist has spent four decades probing the fractures beneath American power, spectacle and mythology. Now, after an absence of thirty years, he returns to Japan with ‘Angels of the Maelstrom’, on view at Pace Gallery Tokyo until June 17.
This new solo exhibition gathers recent drawings and sculptures shaped by Longo’s enduring dialogue between Japan and the US. Across Pace’s two floors, allegorical images of crashing waves, submerged whales, tigers, mountains and blooming peonies unfold beside portraits of 20th-century American icons, creating a charged visual field where natural force and historical memory collide. At the centre stands Untitled (American Samurai), a monumental depiction of Shohei Ohtani, whom Longo sees as a living emblem of cultural convergence: a Japanese athlete redefining America’s national pastime.
The exhibition’s title draws on Angelus Novus, Paul Klee’s haunting image of an angel suspended between surrender and flight, later interpreted by Walter Benjamin as history’s helpless witness. Longo adopts this figure as a lens through which to view the present maelstrom of violence, media saturation and uncertain futures.
