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Kazuki Takamatsu

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KAZUKI TAKAMATSU

Kazuki Takamatsu was born in Sendai, Japan in 1978. From a country known both for its picturesque landscapes and for its extremely high suicide rate, his work aims to highlight this duality of enchanting beauty and dreadful sadness.
Takamatsu attended the “Oil Painting” faculty at the renowned Tohoku University of Art and Design, where he graduated in 2001. He currently lives and works in his hometown, Sendai, known for having been nearly completely destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami Tohoku in 2011. Takamatsu’s work still presents a clear connection to those catastrophic events, and his work creates beautiful hybrids of pain and hope, luring the viewer into a never-ending spiral of emotions.
To create his beautiful pieces, Takamatsu uses a technique known as “depth-mapping” while also getting inspiration for his subjects from the classic Japanese manga girls. Depth-mapping is a mixed media technique that consists of the combination of classical drawing, airbrush, digital graphics and gouache hand painting. This process makes it so that every single pixel appears as a specific shade of grey which is proportional to the distance the viewer sees it from. Thanks to this technique Takamatsu is able to give his work an incredible amount of depth and surrealism. His monochromatic Lolitas are born in a digital study and they are then shaped through infinite shades and tones of whites and greys, to emerge from an abysmal depth into the breathtaking compositions that are Takamatsu’s final pieces.
“Black and white are a metaphorical expression of positive and negative, good and bad, race and religion. By mixing modern digital material with analogue ones I hope to recreate the emotions young guys and girls feel towards the modern society… and the consistency that elapses between the human and the digital society.”
-Kazuki Takamatsu
Takamatsu expresses these principles through dark, violent narratives of melancholic floating infant figures holding tightly onto symbolic objects such as skulls or weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, his Lolitas are depicted in poses of mesmerising innocence creating a surreal dimension where every corner could be hiding either the most warming light or the most ruthless darkness.
The artworks are clearly profuse with the artist’s empathy and sensitivity and as he mentions in an interview: “Each and every one of the layers in my paintings represents a distance where there isn’t any shade or any light, an environment in which you can explore dark themes such as death and the current social conditions.”

Website:  Kazuki Takamatzsu

Instagram: kazukitakamatsu777

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Kazuki Takamatsu è nato a Sendai (Giappone) nel 1978. Ad oggi è considerato uno dei maggiori esponenti del contemporaneo giapponese ed il suo seguito di pubblico e collezionismo è in costante crescita. Ha frequentato il Dipartimento di Pittura presso l’Università di Tohoku di Arte & Design, dove si è laureato nel 2001. La sua tecnica di “depth-mapping” e lo stile pittorico così come il linguaggio intimo, sono ispirati ai personaggi femminili che popolano i Manga giapponesi. Le sue opere sono uniche e particolarmente complesse in quanto in grado di fondere il disegno classico, aerografo e la pittura gouache con la grafica digitale. Le sue Lolite, monocromatiche emergono dall’abisso, prendendo forma da strati di bianco e grigio che esprimono metaforicamente il rapporto tra Ying e Yang, l’ambiguità tra il positivo e il negativo. Malinconiche e conturbanti, le fanciulle di Takamatsu sembrano vestite di una luce mistica e rivelatrice che nasconde una decorazione stratificata di simboli della tradizione giapponese il cui dettaglio le rende irresistibili. Takamatsu ha esposto internazionalmente nelle più prestigiose gallerie internazionali e con la DCG dal 2013.

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