TOMOO GOKITA (B. 1969)

I am presuming that to deform the human face might be a reaction against my practice of depicting them like crazy when I was young. Probably, I have become tired of depicting faces. Also, I have loved the masked wrestlers of the Mexican Lucha libre and those masks in Africa all this time, and a kind of transformational desire 'to hide a face and to become a different character,' which can be symbolized in those masks, may have affected my work.
—Tomoo Gokita