Kazutaka's profile
Artist Statement
I am Japanese. I was born in 1976 in Japan. At this time our society, which had been Americanized after WWII had finally become fully industrialized. As a Japanese man living in America, I feel we are losing our sense of tradition now more than ever as a byproduct of time and the forgetting of traditional fables. After I moved to America, I met artists who showed a greater interest in Japanese tradition than many Japanese people living in Japan. By way of my paintings I work to understand these trends and preserve my own cultural values, generating works that hint at a sense of modernized Japanese folklore.
In October, 2015, I created an system I call Color Knitting. Working with the color knitting system I created has been helping me to understand what it means to be a Japanese person living in this contemporary world. My artwork strives to combine images specific to traditional Japanese culture and references to tropes recognizable to the world effected by consumerism. To make my Color Knitting Paintings, I create patterns with paint by way of cross-hatching color and strips, creating patterns inspired by Japanese fabrics and baskets. For example, my color palette for this series has drawn exclusively from the colors of the toys I bought at Toys r us. However, these colors can be seen universally in all westernized societies.
The compositions for my series of system paintings are developed entirely through Chigirie, a Japanese traditional paper collage method achieved through the tarring and gluing of colored paper to form an arrangements. While the square format of my canvases are derived from the shape of origami paper. Within my paintings, I also maintain hand-painted quality and slight irregularities/fluctuations in line to allow for a sense of what the Japanese call Wabisabi, meaning the beauty of impermanence and the balance of perfection and imperfection.
I am Japanese. I was born in 1976 in Japan. At this time our society, which had been Americanized after WWII had finally become fully industrialized. As a Japanese man living in America, I feel we are losing our sense of tradition now more than ever as a byproduct of time and the forgetting of traditional fables. After I moved to America, I met artists who showed a greater interest in Japanese tradition than many Japanese people living in Japan. By way of my paintings I work to understand these trends and preserve my own cultural values, generating works that hint at a sense of modernized Japanese folklore.
In October, 2015, I created an system I call Color Knitting. Working with the color knitting system I created has been helping me to understand what it means to be a Japanese person living in this contemporary world. My artwork strives to combine images specific to traditional Japanese culture and references to tropes recognizable to the world effected by consumerism. To make my Color Knitting Paintings, I create patterns with paint by way of cross-hatching color and strips, creating patterns inspired by Japanese fabrics and baskets. For example, my color palette for this series has drawn exclusively from the colors of the toys I bought at Toys r us. However, these colors can be seen universally in all westernized societies.
The compositions for my series of system paintings are developed entirely through Chigirie, a Japanese traditional paper collage method achieved through the tarring and gluing of colored paper to form an arrangements. While the square format of my canvases are derived from the shape of origami paper. Within my paintings, I also maintain hand-painted quality and slight irregularities/fluctuations in line to allow for a sense of what the Japanese call Wabisabi, meaning the beauty of impermanence and the balance of perfection and imperfection.
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