NYAB Event - Masayuki Yoshinari “Stress Test”

Masayuki Yoshinari “Stress Test”

Ouchi Gallery

This event has ended.

Born in 1983, Kanagawa, Japan

Lives and works in Kanagawa, Japan

The dynamic and unique atmosphere of today’s Yoshinari’s work was established was established in 2015, after undergoing a series of stages.

The first was in the late nineties when the artist came in contact with graffiti art. Kanagawa prefecture, the artist’s hometown, is one of the most popular sites for graffiti art in Japan.

The art form had a major influence on the artist, then in his late teens. In pursuit of originality, Yoshinari would go through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of different words.

The sense of spontaneity and exhilaration apparent in his work from this time is still visible in his current work.

The second stage was in his twenties when Yoshinari developed a strong awareness of his own nationality. During a trip to Okinawa in his late twenties, he had a chance encounter with bingata, a traditional dyeing technique native to the region. Witnessing the skills of the bingata masters, which use colors and patterns reflecting the different cultural and historical aspects of the locality, sparked a strong interest in traditional Japanese culture. Accessing local cultures rooted in each region passed on through the generations was for Yoshinari a source of inspiration. This brought him to the realization that incorporating aspects of these cultures into his own work could somehow be a way to take on these cultures.

The Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 also had a major psychological influence on the artist. The catastrophe invoked an intense visceral awareness of an invisible fear, anxiety, and a sense of death that the artist had never experienced. He began to doubt every piece of information that he had, up to that point, unquestioningly believed and began examining their validity.

What sparked the third stage of Yoshinari’s artistic progression was in 2012, when he participated in a group exhibition which led him to experiment with screen printing. The following year, his screen printing took a new turn: Yoshinari began his attempt of what he refers to as “live screen printing” where he would screen print in front of onlookers at events of varying scales. The artist’s live screen printing is innovative as well as original in that the work never turns out the same. Yoshinari uses several kinds of ink, distributing them on the screen and swiping them together to create a blend of color that produces an unique expression. Though screen printing is generally linked to mass production, the artist uses it as a tool to print unique single pieces.By further working with this method, Yoshinari arrived at his own mode of dynamic expression.

The artist’s three creative stages marked by graffiti art, traditional Japanese culture, and screen printing, are what informs Yoshinari’s sensitivities, and his method of deconstruction and reconstruction of what he has absorbed is what produces the atmosphere and narrative of his work. His original method of expression and the unique atmosphere of his work will surely captivate the hearts of many viewers.