Kazuki Takamatsu – Parallelization Era @ Corey Helford Gallery [Los Angeles]

Japanese artist, Kazuki Takamatsu, creates work by utilizing his own trademark mixed media technique known as “depth-mapping” which combines classical drawing, airbrush, graphics and gouache hand painting. As his bio explains, “This process makes it so that every single pixel appears as a specific shade of grey which is proportional to the distance the viewer sees it from.” As someone who has both witnessed his work in person and watched video of him creating it, the results are still mind-boggling as to how he achieves them. His paintings tend to possess a haunting ghostlike quality, while simultaneously remaining bold and graphic. They are delicate, yet structural, and have the ability to present almost computer-like levels of precision and symmetry, yet look and feel as if they were poured from billowing smoke. The images are can either appear as if they fading out or coming into focus depending on your perception. His imagery operates like a balance between the dark and light allowing them to exist in the gray area between each world, while never existing fully within either. This is what gives the pieces life and breath, the idea of succumbing to exhaustion, disillusionment, and/or the overwhelming submersion of depression and tragedy; at other times, the triumphant and powerful pushback and rise from the shadows.

Concepts of duality tend to be a common thread in Takamatsu‘s work with collections in the past being dedicated to such themes as release and restraint, truth and evil, life and death, or even protection and expulsion. The artist has further explored these seemingly disparate concepts through ideas of metamorphosis and shifts such as puberty, which represents that uncertain adolescent middle ground between childhood and adulthood. In one interview, Kazuki explains,  “Each and every one of the layers in my paintings represents a distance where there isn’t any shade or any light, an environment in which you can explore dark themes such as death and the current social conditions.” One can only speculate about how much of his approach has been influenced by his home of Sendai, Japan, which was almost entirely decimated by the earthquake and tsunami Tohoku in 2011, and where he continues to live and work. His bio further states that being “from a country known both for its picturesque landscapes and for its extremely high suicide rate, his work aims to highlight this duality of enchanting beauty and dreadful sadness.”

On Saturday, October 7th, Takamatsu is set to open a brand new exhibit titled Parallelization Era at the Corey Helford Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. This will mark the 6th solo show the painter has done for the gallery following the Your Wings exhibition back in January of 2021.
The artist offers the following insight regarding his latest body of work:

“This exhibition is a group of works that expresses the parallel processing of human beings, who use multiple brains to derive a single answer at high speed. In recent years, I feel that we don’t for ourselves but rather we ask the internet all our questions. We’ve entered an age in which we can share answers that feel good to us with someone we don’t even know. It’s as if there are many alter egos of you all over the world and it’s not only for humans, it could also be AI. You will be given answers one after another, answers that you have never experienced, what you should do in the future, and even what you should buy. I feel a strange sense of wonder in this age where efficiency is so important that we no longer worry about a single answer and think deeply about it. Someone is a part of me, and I am a part of someone else.”

Check out a handful of preview images for the exhibition below the following event details…

WHAT:

PARALLELIZATION ERA
Solo Exhibition by Kazuki Takamatsu

WHEN:

Opening:
Saturday, October 7th, 2023
7pm-11pm

WHERE:

Corey Helford Gallery
[Mainroom]
571 S Anderson St (Enter on Willow St)
Los Angeles, CA 90033
Phone: (310) 287-2340

ADDITIONAL INFO:

Opening is ALL AGES w/NO COVER
Artist will be in attendance
Show on view until Saturday, November 11th, 2023
Gallery hours: Tues – Sat. noon – 6pm