Nue

Venerating traits of traditional Japanese style painting Nihonga , Hisashi Tenmyouya self-coined his works into a new genre of Neo-Nihonga in his desire and loyalty to revive the deflated nostalgia of 'Japanness' that is lost in the global socio-political and economic dynamics of modernity. The oeuvres appear obsessively clean in perfection, perhaps suggestive of the artist's conventional Shinto and Buddhist ideal in regarding neatness as ethically proper and beautiful. Nue (Lot 123) portrays a legendary creature with the head of a monkey, torso of taniki (Japanese raccoon dog), paws of tiger, and tail of a serpent. This is not a Chinese auspicious creature, but a Japanese mythical Y?kai that appeared in The Tale of the Heike, Genpei Josuiki , and in works by late Edo period painters like Utagawa Kuniyoshi or Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. A mysterious unidentified creature that is being described as an evil bird, a wild thunder beast, or to refer to any non-descript existence. Y?kai are a class of creatures in Japanese folklore, classical Y?kai represented by tsukumogami can only be seen by living close to nature. By utilizing this character, Hisashi Tenymyouya reminds the aspects of humanity and corporeality, the entities and principles of the ancestral divinities, and beauty of the wilderness. He, at the same time, condemning "deceptive spirits of the mountains and rivers" in modern age bombarded with virtual simulators, and the loss of classical culture. It is a testimonial to his sentience of globalization as an inescapable living condition.
Conducting the artistic practice of layering, reproducing drawings on tracing papers and carving pencil lines on wood physically mimic the Japanese woodblock prints ukiyo-e from the 17th century, while juxtaposing contrasting motifs of all ages and cultures acquired from graffiti, robot, tattoo, Kabukimono, computer games, for contemporary relevance . Nue bestows a sense of warrior strength, sanctifying the figure taken as satire against inescapable influences of current affairs, Occidentalism, politics, capitalism, terrorism and diplomacy in modern day Japan. The convergence of cultural assortment embeds profoundly engaging extrinsic narratives, and speaks multivalent depths of his sentiments for contemporary Japan.