The Invasion of Cyberspace – Glass explores Yutaka Inagawa’s new body of work ahead of his latest solo show in London
Comprising of numerous visual layers and perspectives, Yutaka Inagawa’s conceptual art embraces digital manipulation, resulting in large and small-scale paintings, photomontages, digital collages and mixed media installations.
Born from Inagawa’s fascination with senses of displacement and juxtaposition in contemporary culture his art seeks to conceptualise the disharmonious, while “representing the real”. Although his work examines both Asian and western cultures, his longstanding preoccupation is with the shortfalls of Japanese culture such as the lack of unity in Tokyo through cultural confusions, language and “how images and identities are consumed and mutated through mass media” which consistently weave throughout his work. However this dis-ease is an important catalyst for creativity, when looking at Inagawa’s work, mutation perfectly articulates its visual presence where perspectives have been altered by the process of collage and colours manipulated digitally.
Inagawa describes his work as rendering the real, which in many ways through his creative process of applying many mutations, he reflects the daily reformations and updates on our culture. This culmination of processes creates strikingly abstract forms where negative space plays an equally important role to the import of each piece.
For Inagawa, the conceptual framework of his art is what he describes as pseudo-code making, whereby he creates visual codes that are “precise representations and conceptual renderings of the real”. His voyeuristic observations of contemporary culture mixed with intensely personal foundations – Inagawa starts each piece by objectifying things from his personal life – make for jarringly visual patterns that his distinguishable style has been established upon.
Viewing his own work collectively, rather than singularly, in correlative diagrams which are in relation into each other – similarly to the process of collage with layers of meaning and representations – it’s unsurprising that Inagawa has exhibited widely as it would be difficult to understand the lineage and scope of his work without experiencing his art directly.
by Stephanie Clair
Yutaka Inagawa: The Invasion of Cyberspace opens with a private view this Friday, December 12, 2014 at Unit24 and runs until 9 January 2015.
For further information, please contact : info@christinamitrentse.com
Unit24 Gallery, 20 Great Guildford Street, London SE1 0FD
Opening times: Mon-Thu: 11 am-6 pm, Fri: 11 am-7 pm Sat: 11 am- 3pm Sun: closed