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Koshiro Akiyama constructs illusionistic, dream-like worlds, filled with melancholy ruminations, through expressively fluid brushstrokes and complex textures.
Koshiro Akiyama is a Japanese visual artist, based in London whose works are based on photos and memories. In his works, artist explores the creative process, utopian ideals and morbidity, whilst demonstrating complex textures created on the papers surface.
The mediums Akiyama uses, especially acrylics, ink, and watercolour, are deliberately chosen to build up multiple layers with fluid brushstrokes. The expressive, often-times disturbing potential of his works together with a distinct brushwork style is a knowing not to Munch. Inspired by the famous expressionist artist, Akiyama utilizes vibrant, even lurid, colours to construct illusionistic and dream-like worlds.
These surrealistic landscapes, created by Akiyama, reflect on a psychological condition, grounded upon a melancholy rumination originating from the moment of his mother’s death. This event gave rise to both his melancholy and an impulse for escape from the inevitable fact of death.
Using a phenomenological and simple process, the artist depicts deeply private and intimate spaces, filled with a sense of compassion and ambiguity. He explains:
"I attempt to express the feeling of it. It’s a meditative practice. Although the figures in my paintings are presented as vulnerable, I also try to show the resilience of the human mind that is a symbol of power and beauty."
Such a direct, intuitive process results in the settings that create psychologically probing paintings, rooted into personal experiences and feelings.
Koshiro Akiyama was born in Tokyo, Japan and studied at Camberwell College of Arts, MA Fine Art, Painting (2020-2021). Akiyama is now based in London and received a BA and MA in Japanese-style Painting at Tokyo University of the Arts. His recent shows include: An Allegory of Love and Time atNew Normal Project in 2022, Royal Watercolor Society Open at Bankside Gallery in 2022, Sunny Art Prize 2022 at Sunny Art Center and London Grads Now 2021 at Saatchi Gallery.
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