This 272-page publication compiles dozens of Tomoo Gokita’s paintings amid a vast array of other imagery, ranging from casually taken Polaroids and photoshoots, to his designs for zines, T-shirts, book covers, and album covers dating back to his former career as a graphic designer. This publication features an essay by Jamieson Webster, the first to examine Gokita’s images through the lens of Freudian psychoanalysis. Webster writes: “his work, with its emphasis (at times) on realistic figuration, is made uncanny by giving it an aura of today’s aggressive human relationships and the sheer fact of a culture of constant surveillance. Indeed what is uncanny is putting into his work the affective climate of the super-ego—showing that we live in a time that has pushed us to the limit of life and death. Our true aesthetic is the uncanny.”

Designed by Brian Roettinger
Text by Jamieson Webster

Physical description:
Softcover, 272 pages
Los Angeles: Blum & Poe, 2021
Edition of 1000
ISBN: 978-0-9987360-1-3
12 x 9.5 inches