Lot Essay
The eclectic use of irony is not merely embedded in his oeuvres but also triggered in the responses of the spectators. Aida Makoto stirs up a passive aggressive reflex by drawing yet repelling the spectators in tandem with his sexual iconoclasm. In Girls don't cry (Lot 399), He figuratively uses the body of a female to paint a three dimensional portrait of a manga girl. He explored the body's perceptual competence to art's eccentric impact on them by resourcefully manipulating the natural curves and assets of the female body, clothing color configuration of a manga character's head; breasts as the protruding eyes, nipples as the pupils, navel as the nostrils and genitals as the chin dimple. The viewer finds them selves taking terse embarrassing glances but with extreme scrutiny at every glance. This juxtaposed interplay is a repetitive factor that Makoto consciously installs, revealing again his capricious behavior but retaining the core nihilism in criticizing the hedonic, materialistic culture of modern Japanese society. The vanity in excessive consumerism in contemporary society has proliferated aimless individuals; this emptiness contaminating everything into worthless products, discarding and ignoring any ethical, moral or humane essence of its initial existence. Like so, even human, furthermore, women has also become objectified into infinite space of distortion. The constant portrayal of women in consumable situations such as commercial media, animation, manga and sexual industry alters them into complex commodity. Makoto's attentiveness towards this reality is portrayed in his modification of the body as the canvas to his paint, twisting the preadolescent girl into a subject of voyeurism.