Garden of Unearthly Delights - Hisashi Tenmyouya

Garden of Unearthly Delights: Works by Ikeda, Tenmyouya & teamLab
Friday, October 10 — Sunday, January 11
Born in 1966 in Tokyo, Hisashi Tenmyouya initially worked as an art director at a record music company. He later began his career as a self-taught fine artist. While utilizing a technique of traditional Japanese-style painting (Nihonga), he incorporates genre motifs of contemporary society and street culture. He calls this unique style Neo Nihonga.
Neo Nihonga draws inspirations and motifs of artistic expressions from across the world and imbues in it a strong degree of contemporaneity, social consciousness, and critical thinking. In recent years, Tenmyouya has expanded his artistic approach to include extravagant and dynamic aestheticism of the samurai-termed basara (“outlaw culture”) that, he believes, underlies Japanese culture throughout its long history, reaching beyond the stereotypically more subdued and austere images of Japan according to the notions of wabi, sabi, and Zen.
Some of the major group exhibitions in which Tenmyouya has participated include: Kawanabe Kyōsai and Tenmyouya Hisashi, Kawanabe Kyōsai Memorial Museum, Saitama Prefecture, Japan (2002); The American Effect—Global Perspective on the United States, 1990–2003, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US (2003); Berlin-Tokyo/Tokyo-Berlin: The Art of Two Cities, Berlin, Germany (2006); The 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2010); Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art, Japan Society Gallery, New York, US (2011), among many others.
His works are in the public collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, US; Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin, US; and Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan.
Official artist website: