HAJIME SORAYAMA: I, ROBOT
Almine Rech is pleased to present I, Robot by Hajime Sorayama. Questioning key assumptions about the nature of life itself, through a discourse with the consciousness of advanced robots, Asimov ultimately queries what it is to be human.
May 30 - July 27, 2024
Sorayama’s ongoing Sexy Robots series ponders the alluring, intimidating imaginary of a cyborg human, merging woman and droid, fleshy anatomy and flashy armor, in a cheeky and unsettling continuum from the Hollywood pin-up to the fantastical future. In his finely rendered, sleek and striking mixed media works on canvas and his iconic sculptural works in steel, Sorayama channels aesthetic visions from Bert Stern to Mel Ramos, Brancusi to Rolls Royce, Egypt to the Oscars.
Throughout his decades-long career, Sorayama has seen the world change around him—or rather, catch up with him. His visionary early art practice—as well as his award-winning robotics design work— now seem prescient. But in balance with the narrative and symbolic pull of the futuristic transmogrifications, the materiality of the works and their compositional lexicon complexifies that vector.
His work is animated by both erotic nostalgia and aspirational futurism. Through acrylic and digital print works on canvas, Sorayama portrays sexualized archetypes of Western feminine beauty and power (Marilyn Monroe, Joan of Arc, Jane Russell; mermaids, goddesses, muses) with an inside-out take on the art history of the male gaze.
Furthermore, the works ask us to consider the traditional and subverted status of beauty in art and in sexuality—and to what degree beauty even means the same thing to humans and robots.
What is more beautiful—the impossibly smooth metal or the soft-ness of plump flesh? The flaws that make an individual, or the at - tainment of a flawless uniformity? What if the most beautiful being was also the most fearsome—the hybrid, the otherworldly, the both? What if all of this soul-seeking philosophy becomes clouded by the heady rush of physical attraction? When you want them, what do you really want, exactly? What if it’s all a trap?
His time in Hol-lywood and especially his work in science fiction graphics, became the inspiration for his iconic work, the internationally acclaimed Sexy Robot series, which has been running since 1978. Featured in per-manent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), he is the rare artist who is equally celebrated by prestigious institutions, fashion houses, erotic publications, as well as the multi-national technology corpora-tions.