OSAKA ART FES HANSHIN

Japanese children like robot heroes very much as a symbol of justice, so to speak, virtue rewarded, vice punished. His works are embodiments of a metaphor expressing modern Japan and old and new Japanese cultures.For example, the “face” represented by real animal bones is an evidence of his pursuit on the subject of what means Japanese.

Speaking of ceramic figurines, we may conjure up Meissen or Lladoro porcelain wares which have flavors of optimistic romanticism. However, Murakami’s figurines of ceramics usually remind us of the association toward death. Most of them are represented by the decaying plant-like images of dying woman.

Satomi Sui is obsessed with the thread. Threads intertwine with dried flowers, hands and feet, and thread upon thread intertwine and hang down. The world of thread and gravity, drawn mainly with a pen on Japanese paper, is delicate and serene, and seems to painstakingly trace the origins of the universe.

OZU Wataru has been exploring the relationship between the painter and motifs in the oriental pictorial space by referring to past works of art, such as landscape paintings, ukiyoe, Western-style paintings, and motifs from Western and Asian art.

Photographer and web designer Erika Kusumi is a logical and clever photography artist. Traditionally, collages are made by cutting out images from magazines and the like, but she uses material she has photographed herself and delivers calculated, unified, and remarkable images that defy visual expectations.