The painting La Mort debuted in A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire, Devan Shimoyama's second solo exhibition at Kavi Gupta gallery in Chicago. The painting shows a skeletal figure wielding a scythe and crouching over a decapitated head and severed hand in a flowery field. Behind the skeleton flows a river formed of the same bedazzled, blue water from Tempérance. The traditional Death tarot signifies transition or transformation rather than tragedy. Here, the severed head might speak to the body-mind disconnect that many of us feel these days.


The paintings and sculptures in A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire examine cultural representations related to transformation. The result of a long period of self-reflection for Shimoyama, the work materially alludes to an internal dialog he has been wrangling with concerning the difference between superficial and true change—a discrepancy noticeable at all levels, from the societal, to individual interactions in which we perform social niceties for each other rather than admit the truth about how we are doing.

Many works in A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire contain visual references to tarot cards, which for Shimoyama relate to how mysticisms can help people adapt to difficult or tumultuous times.