Motohiko Hagiwara – Good Friday

Here’s an interesting sculpture grouping by young artist Motohiko Hagiwara (萩原元彦) called “Good Friday”. Is it simply a group of teen monsters going to for an evening downtown or is there a deeper meaning? The artist exhibited these as his final project at the Tama Art University where he was a student at the sculpture department.

Yoichiro Kawaguchi – Gross Tendril

One of Japan’s more famous artists, but still relatively unknown outside the country is Tokyo University professor Yoichiro Kawaguchi (河口洋一郎) whose pioneering work in computer graphics and almost organic CGI creations have been inspiring art students in Japan since the 1970′s. This man was doodling on his computer before I was even born! I saw this work, the Gross Tendril, at Tokyo Design Week last year. It is a good example of his funky pop-art influence sculpture that is clearly grounded in mathematics and algorithm. Maybe you remember the gun toting samurai warriors that I posted a few days ago? Mr. Kawaguchi is from the same little island as those guns – Tanegashima.

Soushokukei – Kumi Sato

This sculpture by young Kumi Sato (佐藤久美) from Joshibi Art University (女子美術大学) was exhibited at the National Art Center in March this year. It’s obviously a herbivore animal of some kind and it’s titled Soushokukei, which is probably a play on words with the term Soushoku Danshi, a term that has become part of everyday vocabulary among young people here in Japan. I wish I could explain it to you but Wikipedia does it better. Still, it’s a wonderfully crafted sculpture. And as usual, even with my considerable google-fu I fail to find anything about this artist online.

Tomodachi – Yuki Hirazawa

This bear wood carving is a work by young artist Yuki Hirazawa (平澤勇輝), of Tama Art University. It’s called Tomodachi (友だち) Japanese for “friend”. Sculptures is probably my favorite art form because it is such a physical expression, it takes so much skill and vision to be able to create a physical object like this, and as usual the details are what makes it. As usual, there’s nothing on the Internet about this artist and his work. On a side note, I think that wooden statues of bears must be the most common non-religious statue found in ordinary Japanese homes!