ーCONCEPT SHEETー
ーCONCEPT SHEETー
Soul and Digital, Individuals and World Systems, Eros, Life and Death, Nature and Culture, Sacred and Profane.
The concept is "0 and 1 ", which is the global minimum digital energy that has been discovered by humankind and natural energy in humans, the earth and space for tens of thousands of years. We are now in an age of insanity, where the body and soul are analog, but the world is digitized, and the balance between the individual and the world system is very dangerous. The dynamism of Japanese beauty is in nature, and Japanese white is the color of life, death, holiness, and hope.
This white energy is expressed in an oriental spirit.
ーCONCEPT SHEETー
ーDIGITAL SEA SERIESー
DEGITAL SEA ~This world is made of zeros and ones...~
It is a place where everything such as god, life, death, love, sex, right, evil, desire, freedom, etc... are floating. It is a beautiful place where only zeros and ones exist like the vast emptiness of space. The place is minimum, very fragile and dangerous.
The energy of the 21st Century
The concept is “the energy of the 21st Century (spirit and nuclear)”. “Spirit” is the natural energy that can be found in the human beings, the earth and the Universe, and “nuclear” is the largest energy of this century that is created by the human beings. The dynamism of the Japanese beauty is in the energy of the nature, and the white colour in Japan is the colour of life, death, sacredly and hope. It represents “life, death and love” in Oriental spiritualism. The theme of “SUPER LOVE” is the extreme communications between humans and humans, humans and the nature, a country and a country, the East and the West, humans and the earth, humans and the Universe, humans and the god etc. We live in the age that the humans are being cut off from the historic time and the family love, so I believe broad communications are important in this era. I have great interests in energy of the sea, wind, Internet, icon, radio wave and feelings etc., which freely cross walls and boarders.
ーWHITE ENERGY SERIESー
TOKYO POP : The Return of Rimpa School
Rimpa school of Japanese painting marks its 400th anniversary in 2015. In 1615, Honami Koetsu opened an artist community in Northern Kyoto, in a place called Takagamine granted him by Tokugawa Ieyasu. This year is a commemorative year and various events were held in Kyoto. One of the characteristics of the Rimpa School is that the school was succeeded by those who were strongly influenced by their predecessors, but it was not merely imitation. Outstanding artists emerged almost every hundred years, and we can say that the Rimpa School is a group of these artists that created works with outside of the box mindset in each era.
Mr. Shinichi Hara, who is holding an exhibition this time, is an artist who created his own world by himself. He has been designing unique CD covers by making full use of CG over many years, but he has finally embarking upon a new path as a professional in the world of paintings, which he has doing it as a hobby. These works harmonises traditional techniques used in Japanese paintings since the Heian Period (794 to 1185), such as using Byakuroku (whitish green colour) in a foundation of an acrylic painting, and we can see a decorative aesthetic sense based on the DNA of Japanese art from his rich decorative expressions, which effectively use gold paint and gold leaf. I met these talented and unique works and decided to call them “TOKYO POP”.
Yoshiyuki Hosomi, Director of the Hosomi Museum
A Transcendental Painting that Merges Opposites
Ever since the Greeks, Western philosophy has been grounded on a dualistic outlook. For example, opposites like good and evil and what exists and what doesnʼt. Shinichi Haraʼs work similarly handles two contending elements in its themes. That is to say, thereʼs the interplay of concepts of light and shadow (yin and yang), death and rebirth, and micro and macro. The most prominent being the contrasts between Western and Eastern, and analog and digital. However, unlike in the case of the confronted dichoto-mies of Western philosophy, the contradicting concepts he deals with seem to merge rather than confront each other.
As far as pictorial structures are concerned, the work can be seen in the context of global contemporary painting. It goes beyond Pop Art or Simulationism. And perhaps, there is also an aspect in it that reconstructs post-modern painting after Jasper Johns with a sense of the present. Even todayʼs graffiti-informed styles seem to be somehow assimilated in his work. The flowing of energy, often drawn in single strokes of vivid white, is reminiscent of traditional Japanese designs like those of the Rimpa school and Hokusai. In other words, he is endowed with a dynamism that integrates all of the aesthetic elements that have impressed him in his life, which are superbly distilled within a technique that is verily his own.
His ability to harmonize the inhuman digital and the organic analog on the same picture is particularly worthy of attention. Just as Jeff Koons was once a financial commodity broker in New York and was able to make art out of capitalism, Hara, once a system engineer at NEC, is capable of sublimating the digital realmʼs binary system in the context of conceptual art in his present role as an artist.
Taisuke Morishita (Art Critic)
(Translation: Aquiles Hadjis)
team SHINICHI HARA
GHOST ANGEL
SPRIT FACE --- ICON
Series of “Sprit Faces” is that human represented spiritual things of that time into masks (face) from the past. Native Africans, Indians etc....,,,they used masks for various kinds of festivals, to exorcise demons by rituals, to communicate with God. Then, there were representation of sprit of that time. So when I thought what kind of masks at this time, this series had started. The icons which appear in this series gathered borderless from the whole world’s newspapers. illustrated books, magazines, internet (science, religion, history, public, medical science, fashion, sports, music..) Human made symbols for communicate from the past. And then, I think it condenses sprit and energy of that age. I’ve been collecting floating symbols all over the world like picking up garbages. Symbols in the works are changeable and facial expression will change depending on symbols.
TOKYO ICON Engraved on the skull
Icons are the universal language which had grown over 30 years around the world. The language barrier does not matter as long we have icons. Realistic rules such as “no smoking”, “no photograph”, and “restricted access” can easily be settled using icons. The wonderful icon of UNICEF makes us think once again that we are never allowed to forget that the mother-child bond is the most important point in the world. The power of icons is spread all over Tokyo and we have been communicating without knowing it. The person who recognized this power is Shinichi Hara. Hara has heartwarmingly, ironically, and energetically built his own world of universal common understanding of icons from chaos. While you are looking at Hara’s works, you will discover a new meaning of icons that are familiar to your eyes and experience a change in our world itself. The golden skull that tattooed icons is somewhat cheerful and creepy… The image is pleasant yet is the meaning is ambiguous. We are the very thing. Shuhei Takahashi (Professor at the Tama Art University)