Ben Sakoguchi
at Potts

Ben Sakoguchi, “Little Boy”/Keloid Tumors, Hiroshima, August 6 1945 (1983). Acrylic on canvas, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and POTTS, Los Angeles. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Ben Sakoguchi was born just outside of Los Angeles, the year before World War II began, and was shortly thereafter forced to spend his early years at an internment camp in Arizona due to his family’s Japanese heritage. At the beginning of August 1945, the end of the war, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sakoguchi, like the rest of the world, lived the next four decades in fear of annihilation—the threat of another atrocity, mediated through propaganda.

In 1983, Sakoguchi took an airbrush painting course at a local university and began making a cohesive collection of paintings that depicted missiles, planes, mushroom clouds, and maimed bodies—a serialized memorialization for all those grieved by wartime practices, rendered in a realistic style reminiscent of a more picturesque time. This nuclear nexus now currently hangs on the main wall at Potts in Alhambra, just a few miles south of Pasadena, the city where Sakoguchi spent 33 years teaching. Since then, additional generations have lived decades in fear, as well; now, simply under new divisively authoritarian regimes.

Sakoguchi’s handling of the subject matter is both completely earnest and emotive, while also being effectually chilling and clinical. Each framed diptych is explicatively titled: this is a thing; this is another thing. They are archived like government files, with the titular texts serving merely as description: dates, locations, types of blasts, etc. Cumulatively titled Bombs, the series points to not only the destructive things themselves, but also the implications that result from the initial innovation and implementation of the weapons. Similarly, a painting is not just the object itself; the conception and execution is just as important as the reception.

Sakoguchi’s juxtapositions in imagery and technique display a noteworthy sway between a self-summoned subjectivity and an Orwellian objectivity. When the artist made these paintings in 1983, our acting president appeared capable of defying diplomacy at any moment and going Rambo on a whim. Today, the reality of our unclear and present leader is that he could spontaneously tell a missile it’s fired. Same shit, different day. 1984 all over again.

Ben Sakoguchi: Bombs runs from November 16, 2017–January 28, 2018 at Potts (2130 Valley Boulevard, Alhambra, CA 91803).

Ben Sakoguchi, BOMBS (1983). Acrylic on canvas, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and POTTS, Los Angeles. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Ben Sakoguchi, “Able” Cloud Chamber Effect/Bikini “Able” Ball of Fire & Ring Cloud (1983). Acrylic on canvas, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and POTTS, Los Angeles. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Ben Sakoguchi, “Baker (Underwater) Spray Dome/Bikini “Baker” Cloud-Chamber Effect (1983). Acrylic on canvas, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and POTTS, Los Angeles. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Ben Sakoguchi, SRAM/ALCM (1983). Acrylic on canvas, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and POTTS, Los Angeles. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Ben Sakoguchi,  Bikini “Baker” Plume Formation/Bikini “Baker” Mushroom Cloud (1983). Acrylic on canvas, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and POTTS, Los Angeles. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Keith J. Varadi is a Pittsburgh-born, Los Angeles-based artist, poet, critic, and curator who has been employed by multiple intelligence and investigations firms, mostly focusing on corporate due diligence. Previously, he was a researcher for the long-running television game show, Jeopardy!. He runs the gallery Gene’s Dispensary out of an old medical office building near MacArthur Park.

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