Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2012
Good artists, like good DJs, know what to throw together to get something fresh going. This is especially true of Neo-Nihonga artists like Hisashi Tenmyouya, who has a small show at the interesting Mizuma Art Gallery.
Along with Fuyuko Matsui, Mise Natsunosuke, and Kumi Machida, Tenmyouya is a leading artist of the Neo-Nihonga movement, an art wave that broke about eight years ago. While old-school Nihonga was always a thing of beauty, it lacked cutting edge and contemporary relevance, and was ripe for reinvention. Tenmyouya’s punkish attitude, replacing moons and cherry blossom with elements of Japanese subculture, like yakuza, bozozoku, and yanki, created an artistic impetus that both delighted and shocked the art world.
His latest show at the Mizuma Art Gallery—which is free—includes two large panel paintings that mirror each other and are created using an unlikely combination of acrylic paint on gold leaf. These are supplemented by a major installation, which is the best piece of art inspired by last year’s terrible earthquake I’ve yet to see.
The paintings called Rhyme seem partly influenced by early-Renaissance painter Paulo Uccello’s The Battle of San Romano (1440). But instead of Italian nobles and mercenaries, Tenmyouya’s work is dominated by multiple versions of the same retro-yakuza tough guy, dressed only in a loincloth, with the occasional tiger thrown in. This creates a riot of action, color, and surrealism not to be missed.
Sounding a more somber note is the installation. This takes as its starting point a Zen garden, but replaces the rocks with black volcanic rocks and skulls adrift in a sea of red sand—an image evocative of the deadly tectonic threat that constantly lurks beneath our feet.
