This post was just supposed to be about the $600,000 sale of the above Gundam based painting (which I found out about via Kotaku), RX-78-2 Kabuki-mono 2005 version, surely an art milestone of one sort or another, but it’s really about the work of artist Tenmyouya Hisashi in general. Sometimes Google is kind and leads you to an easy revelation of sorts, in this case driving me right to Temyouya’s website, something that doesn’t always happen with unknown foreign artists.
Browsing through the site, I was expecting to find something absurdly commercial and kitschy, another post-culture, Murakami-esqe rehash of familiar and sales-friendly icons. But what I found was more deeply moving, as if Tenmyouya has collaged together some kind of secret code, a bursting cloud of reference, filled with potential. His work seems to nearly drown in kitschy reference – corny Bodhisattvas, an obvious and almost absurd God of Gamblers (which you should watch, immediately, BTW) re-hash, the legs of Armoured Core’s quadruped mecha, a recurring documentary clip of a cycling Sumo…, but it also seems to demand deep intellectual questioning from the viewer. In the work, I also feel a sense of quiet anger, of dissatisfaction, of emotional and societal detachment, the origin of which evades me.
Click the image to visit his site, and here’s a direct link to a awesomely thorough chronological breakdown of Tenmyouya’s work.
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