Odessa Staircase Redux

Artist's book

“Odessa Staircase Redux” is a kind of flipbook revisiting the well-known film sequence from Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin.” The first frame of every cut is drawn in black ink by hand. The ensuing series of 158 ink drawings is organized to form a typology of camera angles and subject matter that in turn creates a new animation of the scene in the mind of the viewer. The book comes with a 16-pages saddle-stitched bonus booklet of
archival films stills depicting a protest by UC Berkeley students against a House Un-American Committee meeting at San Francisco City Hall in 1961.

Kota Ezawa depicts iconic moments from art history, film, photography, and popular culture and re-presents them as animated videos, slide projections, light boxes, and prints. The work’s paired down minimalist aesthetic helps to streamline Ezawa’s focus on the changing role of the camera and its effect on the viewer’s reception.

Kota Ezawa is a German-Japanese artist born in Cologne and currently based in San Francisco. He has had solo exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Saint Louis Art Museum, Hayward Gallery in London, and the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver. His work is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Ezawa is represented by Murray Guy in New York, Haines Gallery in San Francisco, Gandy Gallery in Bratislava, and Galerie Anita Beckers in Frankfurt.

Co-published with Charles H. Scott Gallery and ECU Press in the Vancouver Special series, edited by Kathy Slade and Christoph Keller.