The abominable beauty of Michiko Kon¡¯s work is back.
In the early 1990s Kon was one of the first female photographic artists from Japan to achieve widespread international recognition. Her work combined a shocking use of animal parts with meticulous technique in a way that was both unsettling and visually seductive. She reached prominence around the time that Damien Hirst first exhibited his shark in a tank of formaldehyde, but some years after Joel-Peter Witkin had started using animal and human body parts in staged photographic tableaux in the ¡®80s.
Kon¡¯s ¡°Elvira, Mistress of the Dark¡± vibe, however, makes the British superstar¡¯s butterfly works look like the self-comforting behavior of Frankenstein¡¯s monster sticking stuff to a wall, while compared to Witkin¡¯s darker and more stridently transgressive work, there is a Rococo-like decorativeness and wit to what she does.
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