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Artwork Description

Takafumi Asakura (b. 1978 –) pours into his poetry in ink a zeitgeist for the 21st century, displaying technical virtuosity whilst experimenting with abstraction and the avant-garde, wielding but a single type of ink and brush to paint the most intricate of Nihonga-style paintings. Negative space is filled entirely with ancient calligraphy, whilst beacons of spiralling ink swirl and coalesce into mythical beasts, Shinto gods, and elements of nature. Yet intricacy and technique are ancillary to whether an artist has the power to paint works that spellbind, enthral, enrapture. Indeed, Asakura’s paintings, rooted in Shinto scripture and the movements within his own imagination, possess the power to stop viewers in their tracks through the visceral strength of his brushstrokes together with his painstakingly meticulous detail. One of the youngest painters to become a juror at the Nitten Japan Fine Arts Exhibition, Takafumi Asakura is widely considered to be one of the most technically advanced painters in the genre of Nihonga today, and as testament to both his prowess and reputation as a painter, has already been acquired by 9 public collections in both Japan and the United States.