Kotaro Hoshiyama
I visited Nihonbashi Takashimaya’s “Art Gallery X” to see the solo exhibition by Kotaro Hoshiyama.
I just barely made it on the very last day of the run, but many of the works already bore “sold” stickers.
Takashimaya is pleased to present “FLYER: Kotaro Hoshiyama Exhibition.”
Advertising does not merely convey the characteristics of a product (the self); it also carries the social role of stimulating consumption.
The portrait works painted by Kotaro Hoshiyama seem to fix onto the canvas the very impulses suppressed in order to survive in society—the individual and society—thereby inviting viewers to empathize or to experience them vicariously, as if to evoke both the destruction and the creation of values.
Hoshiyama, who immersed himself in the world of painting out of a desire to draw manga, says he sensed the reality of society in manga. The spirit of binary opposition—establishment versus anti-establishment—found in manga that satirize religion, politics, society, and manners lives on as a consistent creative philosophy in Hoshiyama, who resists his own contradictions: inside and outside, chaos and order, manga and Japanese-style painting, artwork and product.
Amid the flood of information passively overwritten in our minds within the sea of advertising that pours out day after day, please take a look at the reality of Kotaro Hoshiyama, who commits, through pictorial expression, to the question of what is false and what is real.
This exhibition presents about 26 works, ranging from a monumental piece measuring 900 × 2,700 cm (a triptych of three 900 cm panels) to smaller works.
Solo Exhibition “Flyer”
As Kotaro Hoshiyama is a company employee involved in advertising, he gave the show the title “Flyer,” relating to his work.
The works, into which he says he poured his own wavering inner feelings, contrast fine ink lines drawn like a pen sketch with boldly, thickly applied acrylic paint, seeming to portray the essential psychology of human beings.
The largest work on view that day seemed to depict a crowd being jostled in the rush-hour crush, and I found myself gazing at it, half searching for myself, the viewer, within its cynical portrayal.
Caricature Series
At the risk of indulging my own personal tastes, the series of celebrity caricatures made the strongest impression on me. They are apparently painted by selecting the artist’s own favorite figures, such as Picasso, Lang, Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, E. A. Poe, and Francis Bacon.
Although I was among the latecomers who only made it on the final day, this is an artist I’ll want to rush to see as early as possible next time. High expectations!
