Lot Essay
Masaru Shichinohe's complex combination of motifs and modern inventions produces surreal works where endless narratives can be created. The viewer is visually transported through all rationality and brought to a world of imagination and curiosity. In creating works of often diminutive and obscure shapes, Shichinohe's unique cropped composition and suggestive use of props are stylistic traits adopted from Italian Renaissance masters, each employed brilliantly to bring his surrealist subjects closer to reality. Often featuring a young male or female in his works, Shichinohe effectively links his paintings together like chapters in a story with each piece drawing the viewer into a visual twilight zone between reality and fiction.