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拍品专文
“I was rushed away from my childhood, a time that should be filled with eating and playing, by the enigmatic monstrosity of war; my dreams were a vortex of fear and anxiety, anger and resignation. On the night of the air raid, I remember watching swarms of people flee from bald mountaintops. But then something occurs to me: was that moment real? Dream and reality are all mixed up in my memories, recorded permanently in this ambiguous way.” – Keiichi Tanaami
Underneath the vibrant colours and bizarre imageries, Keiichi Tanaami has always been using his artworks to respond to life, culture, dreams, and childhood memories from the Second World War that he cannot forget. His influences are diverse: he was an anime movie director, music album cover designer, and the chief editor of the Japanese edition of Playboy magazine. In 1975, he met Andy Warhol, and this experience inspired him to integrate symbolism from different cultures with personal memories into his visual language. Flame-covered characters and radiating lines in his paintings are references to an episode of US air force dropping bombs on Tokyo when he was nine years old. The crashing waves of the Sea of Japan, pine trees, magical cranes, and elephants are arranged according to a spiral structure — these imageries are drawn from the middle aged artist's hallucinations when he fell ill. Using the visual vocabulary of American graphic novels, the artist depicts his life story
as a fascinating and exaggerated contemporary Ukiyo-e painting. As one of the most important counterculture and pop art artists from the post-war period, Keiichi Tanaami's art works are widely collected by world-class museums including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Berlinische Galerie, and M+ Museum of Visual Culture in Hong Kong.
Underneath the vibrant colours and bizarre imageries, Keiichi Tanaami has always been using his artworks to respond to life, culture, dreams, and childhood memories from the Second World War that he cannot forget. His influences are diverse: he was an anime movie director, music album cover designer, and the chief editor of the Japanese edition of Playboy magazine. In 1975, he met Andy Warhol, and this experience inspired him to integrate symbolism from different cultures with personal memories into his visual language. Flame-covered characters and radiating lines in his paintings are references to an episode of US air force dropping bombs on Tokyo when he was nine years old. The crashing waves of the Sea of Japan, pine trees, magical cranes, and elephants are arranged according to a spiral structure — these imageries are drawn from the middle aged artist's hallucinations when he fell ill. Using the visual vocabulary of American graphic novels, the artist depicts his life story
as a fascinating and exaggerated contemporary Ukiyo-e painting. As one of the most important counterculture and pop art artists from the post-war period, Keiichi Tanaami's art works are widely collected by world-class museums including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Berlinische Galerie, and M+ Museum of Visual Culture in Hong Kong.