Court Tree

Current Exhibition:
Masao Gozu: Windows to New York
May 15th – Aug 1st, 2021

Court Tree Collective is pleased to announce Windows to New York. Featuring the photograph and sculpture of internationally celebrated artist Masao Gozu. The exhibition is a rare chance to witness Gozu’s photography alongside his carefully constructed sculptures, an ode to the city that he has grown to love and call home since 1970. The exhibition opens May 15th, 2021.

Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1946, he studied art and design in Japan, before moving to Brooklyn in 1970. By 1973, he graduated from the Brooklyn Museum Art School. Despite his formal art training, Gozu began teaching himself photography. Something that would shape his artistic career. The bulk of Gozu’s photographic portfolio are images focused on windows. Whether a series documenting the subtle changes of Harold’s Bar window over the years, or a portrait of eager parade-watchers leaning out, the window is an undeniable motif of Masao Gozu’s art. The windows represent the vessel to the passing of time. Despite shooting at an angle, he developed a process of perspective adjustments that alters the composition to appear straight-on. This highly innovative printing technique created the passage of witnessing the subject straight on.

Furthermore, beginning in 1984, he began collecting rubble from the many construction sites in New York City. This historical collection of brick would become the medium for his infamous sculpture work. After resizing the bricks he began to reconstruct the windows of histori buildings. The sculptures are architectural facades, careful recreations that offer tangible versions of settings he has photographed and experienced while living in New York. Masao Gozu has witnessed the transformation of New York City, and his photographs and sculptures archive his observations of NY moments; an ethnographic and documentarian oeuvre that upholds the Japanese artist’s appreciation for his American experience.

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