Tuesday, 21 November 2006 |

Kenji Hirata work
looks like graphic design, but it's bigger and hotter, it's graphic
wall painting.
In his productions, the New York based painter from
Nagasaki, Japan incorporates water, fire, metal, wood, and oil, fusing
a complex narrative out of the five elements. He moves confidently
between compositions of layered density and vast areas of open fields
and clean forms.
Strongly inspired by nature, his work also has strong
reference to the vibrancy of Jamaican dance hall sound systems, the
billboards and hand painted signage of Southeast Asia, the sci-fi
futurism and structure of H.R. Geiger, Phase2, Doze, Skwerm, Mike Ming,
and the Barnstormers crew. As an original member of the Barnstomers,
Hirata has created large-scale public mural paintings in New York,
Miami, Tokyo, and the rural town of Cameron, NC, where the artist
collective was founded. Hirata is an artist who creates work in an
impressive variety of situations, from huge colorful public murals, to
more personal paintings, from animated works for film to illustrations
for books. by Yvan Rodic
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