Hisaharu Motoda's Neo Ruins

I used to work for a brilliant man who, while rational in every other way (almost to a fault), was completely obsessed with the catastrophic potential of an Avian Flu epidemic. His paranoia led him to purchase an outdoor generator, stock years worth of supplies and hoard thousands of doses of Tamiflu (all of which are now quietly gathering mold in his medicine cabinet). His fears of a global disaster immediately came to mind in my first glance at Hisaharu Motoda’s latest series of lithographs. Neo-Ruins presents a post-apocalyptic view of modern Tokyo in which devastation has been wrought quietly, much like in ghost towns across the American Southwest. The details in the images are fascinating: storefronts are slowly crumbling, cars are dissolving in the street, and the urban environment is eerily empty but for creeping vines and shrubs. As with Ozymandias, the odds of our proud monuments and skyscrapers lasting into the distant future seem slim. Thankfully, we are blessed with artists like Motoda whose works force us to confront the future…even as we ponder the past.