The Prints of Roger Shimomura

the long version

"This catalogue raisonne begins with Roger Shimomura's first Andy Warhol-inspired screen prints, made while a graduate student in the late 1960s, and ends with his 2005 suite Mistaken Identities, published by the Lawrence Lithography Workshop. Featuring color reproductions of all the artist's extant prints to date, along with an introductory essay and artist's notes, this is the first publication to systematically examine a specific body of work within Shimomura's larger oeuvre. In his prints, as in his paintings and theatre pieces, Shimomura employs a vibrant and provocative stylistic combination of twentieth-century American Pop art and traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints. In his work one finds a personal iconography of popular images and ordinary objects that the artist uses to explore both his own Japanese American identity and the complexities of contemporary American culture."--Jacket.