Yuya Hashizume “4 -four-“
I visited a solo show by illustrator Yuya Hashizume. The venue is TEMPORARY CONTEMPORARY in Tsukishima.
Yuya Hashizume is known for motifs that call to mind the characters of Fujiko F. Fujio, and my first impression was that he must be a pretty popular artist — the venue was full of young men and women.
Past the merchandise counter near the entrance, an installation like the one in the video below greets you. It blinks its eyes at you.
Drawing Works
The artist himself said, “Feel free to ask me anything,” so I was able to have a conversation with Yuya Hashizume in person.
What surprised me was that the name of Fujiko Fujio came up from the very start of our chat. He openly declared that his work is made under that influence, and while I felt he had beaten me to the punch, it may have actually made the rest of the conversation flow more smoothly.
There does not seem to be any particular backstory or setting for the individual characters he uses as motifs — he seems to work by taking pieces he has built up over time and varying their colors or shifting their expressions.
Also worth noting: Yuya Hashizume did not train in fine art; he mainly creates his works on a PC and outputs them as giclée or silkscreen prints.
Printed Works
The next works — giclée prints applied to canvas — showed a refined, precise printing technique, and at an S30 canvas size they carried a real sense of impact.
Yuya Hashizume clearly favors works rendered in flat planes of color, and he spoke of his willingness to take advantage of contemporary technology without hesitation.
Summary
There is likely debate over whether this counts as copying, homage, tracing, parody, and so on — but leaving that to the specialists, I would note that there was no artist statement of the kind you would normally expect at a solo show, and the venue itself was a rental space rather than a standard gallery. Whether the artist has intentionally kept a distance from the art industry, or whether it was purely his own choice, I could not tell.
Sales appear to have gotten off to a strong start, with plenty of red-dot stickers on view, and merchandise sales also seem to be doing well. He clearly has a solid base of fans, and as a business the show appears to be at least a moderate success.
Standing in front of the works, I could feel their strength — I was especially impressed by the crisp finish of the giclée prints at that S30 size. On the other hand, I could not find something in the works that felt like a message intended for the viewer.
Approachable characters should be capable of a certain kind of communication precisely because they are approachable, so I look forward to seeing where the artist takes this next.
