CRSギャラリー では、日本人アーティスト / イラストレーター Hiroki Otsuka氏による墨絵の展示会 “Ne-Ko（ねこ）” を10月22日から11月30日まで開催いたします。

日本伝統の墨を使い、滑らかな筆使いで描写された作品は、現代の水墨画のようでもあり、幻想的で洗練された手法で遊び好きな猫たちを印象的に描き出しています。世界中たくさんの人に愛され続けている猫、日本では、「幸運を招く」シンボルとしても人気があります。

微妙な墨の濃淡を効果的に使いつつ、生き生きとした筆使いで、猫の活気ある姿、優雅な動きや身のこなし、そしてもちろんみなさんの大好きな可愛さも捉えている作品、ぜひご観覧にいらしてください。

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-Hiroki Otsuka-
日本ではピロンタン名義でマンガを、オーツカヒロキ名義で少女マンガを執筆。両ジャンルともにスタイリッシュな絵柄とエッジの効いたギャグで注目される。2002年よりNYに拠点を移してからはマンガをモチーフとしたアート作品で世界各国でソロショウを開催するなどアーティストとして活躍中。コミカルなものからセンシティブなものまで幅広い表現を得意とする。

ABOUT HIROKI OTSUKA

A professional comic book illustrator since 1994, Brooklyn-based Japanese artist/illustrator Hiroki Otsuka has illustrated for a number of major Japanese publications. In 2005, Hiroki Otsuka’s focus shifted from graphic to fine arts, working predominantly with traditional sumi ink used in Japanese calligraphy. Hiroki Otsuka’s debut solo show at Brooklyn’s Stay Gold Gallery in 2005 prompted The New Yorker to write that his works “push the populist youth quotient through the roof.” Since then, his work has appeared in galleries throughout the United States and Japan, and has been featured in international art fairs in New York, Tokyo and Basel, Switzerland. He’s been exhibited at major art institutions such as The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (Nothing Moments, 2007) and in academic settings such as Pittsburgh University Art Gallery (Making Faces: Depiction of Women in Japan from Edo to Today, 2009). In 2007, Hiroki Otsuka was featured in Japan Society’s centennial exhibition Making a Home, curated by Eric C. Shiner, that highlighted 33 Japanese contemporary artists living and working in New York. Berlin’s Kunstraum Richard Sorge held a major exhibition of Hiroki Otsuka’s paintings and murals in 2009 entitled Everything to More. The same year, Otsuka provided the integrated illustrations for choreographer Jeremy Wade’s critically acclaimed multimedia dance there is no end to more, a Japan Society commission which had its world premiere in New York in December 2009. Hiroki Otsuka served as Japan Society’s first-ever manga artist-in-residence during the exhibition Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection. Most recently, a show of new work, “Men and Cats,” has been hung at the Wayfarers Gallery in Brooklyn, and in the Woodland/Shimko Galleries in Provincetown, Mass. and Palm Springs. https://www.hirokiotsuka.nyc

ARTIST STATEMENT

Ne-Ko

Cats have captivated Japanese artists for more than a thousand years. In the Tale of Genji, the masterwork of 11th century literature, a cat sets the plot in motion by knocking over a screen, and the moment has been captured time and again in prints and paintings. With the arrival of ukiyo-e, the woodblock printing style of the 17th century, the homes of Japan became populated by the world’s first great wave of cat art, featuring the animals both in their natural form and walking upright in kimonos. Perhaps it is not surprising that Hello Kitty, the most famous illustrated feline, also comes from Japan.

Hiroki Otsuka’s work consistently mixes the media and methods of high and popular art. In “Ne-Ko,” which means cat in Japanese, he approaches this time-honored subject. Otsuka uses the traditional, black-ink style of sumi painting to capture the animals’ pose and self-possession. But it is his eye as a manga cartoonist of 25 years that gives his subjects the motion and playfulness that has endeared them to their human companions.

キュレーターについて
三宅れいな
NYCに生まれ育つ。その影響でビジュアルアートと「黒」色に興味をもつ。Vasser College 美術史学士課程終了、卒業後今回が初のCRSギャラリー担当キュレーターとなる。