Art can be recycled. So says Japanese-German artist Kota Ezawa, who sometimes repurposes his own imagery—he recently produced a light box from his 2006 computer vector drawing Nan and Brian in Bed.

A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute and Stanford University, Ezawa, 44, strips down pop culture references in works such as his latest installation, Boardwalk (on view through Nov. 2015 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts). The piece replicates a part of East Coast culture that became even more iconic in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Ezawa hopes it serves as “visual disaster relief.”

Represented locally by Haines Gallery, the Nob Hill artist has work in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and the Smithsonian, and he is currently a resident artist at Workshop Residence in Dogpatch. See his paper cutout animation Self-Portrait as Someone Else, as part of the group show “Proximities 2: Knowing Me, Knowing You,” at the Asian Art Museum (through Dec. 8).