Kota Ezawa with Constance Lewallen

Kota Ezawa (b. 1969 in Cologne, Germany) lives and works in Oakland, CA. Ezawa’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Baltimore Museum of Art; SITE Santa Fe; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; Hayward Gallery Project Space, London, UK; and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Ezawa participated in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and Shanghai Biennale 2004. He received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2003; a SECA Art Award in 2006 and a Eureka Fellowship in 2010. His work is included in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; and Whitney Museum of American Art.

Constance Lewallen is emeritus curator at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. As Matrix curator there from 1980-88 she organized over 75 small contemporary art exhibitions. As Senior Curator from 1998 to 2007, she curated many major exhibitions, including Joe Brainard, A Retrospective, 2001; Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), 2001; Everything Matters: Paul Kos, a Retrospective, 2003; Ant Farm (1968-1978), 2004 (co-curated with Steve Seid); A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s, 2007. And, in 2011 State of Mind: New California Art ca. 1970, co-curated with Karen Moss. All toured nationally and internationally and were accompanied by catalogs. Her recent books published by UC Press include: 500 Capp Street: David Ireland’s house and Bruce Nauman; Spatial Encounters (co-author Dore Bowen). Currently, she co-curated with Ted Mann Stephen Kaltenbach: The Beginning and The End, at the Manetti Shrem Museum, UC Davis, and Reese Palley Gallery (with Jordan Stein), at Cushion Works, San Francisco. Lewallen is Editor-at-Large for the Brooklyn Rail.