AMANO Yoshitaka "AURUM"（TOKYO）

Mizuma Art Gallery announces the opening of AMANO Yoshitaka’s exhibition “AURUM” on September 2, 2015. Following “TOKYO SYNC” in 2013, this will be the artist’s second solo show at Mizuma Art Gallery.

AMANO Yoshitaka joined the animation film studio Tatsunoko Production at the age of 15, and has been involved in character design for such popular anime titles as Time Bokan and Science Ninja Team Gatchaman among others. After leaving Tatsunoko to work independently, his illustration work for the Vampire Hunter D novels, and especially also his character designs for the video game series Final Fantasy, made Amano’s name known on the international stage.

Since shifting the focus of his work to fine art in the late 1990s, Amano has been active mainly abroad, before the large-scale exhibition “Yoshitaka Amano: The World Beyond Your Imagination” at Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto in the fall of 2014 kicked off a tour of Amano’s works around Japanese art museums. The exhibition is currently showing at Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, and has helped re-establish Amano’s reputation also in his home country.

The exhibition title, “AURUM”, is the Latin term for “gold”, and originally refers to the brilliant shine of things, or morning twilight. There exists a very close relationship between man and gold, a material with many appealing qualities that widely occurs in nature, and that maintained its fascination as a symbol for “technical skill”, “beauty” and “power” since ancient times. As represented by the art of alchemy, it has been a source of science and imagination, and with its outstanding workability, conductibility and resistance, it still plays a significant role in today’s industrial arts. As a matter of course, in the realm of arts and crafts gold has been used in various ways that have developed through the ages since the very early history of mankind.

While gold has been an effective element regarding the coloration of Amano’s works also in the past, this exhibition focuses on a rather blunt approach to the material. Its appeal as a physical matter or an optical state gives the works an irreplicable uniqueness beyond the confines of design. Now it remains to be seen what new aspects gold, which next to its visual and scientific character has also various psychological effects, will reveal as a medium for embodying Amano’s exceptional imaginative power. On display at this exhibition are various types of works ranging from painting to earthenware, flavored with a number of specifically Japanese elements. Enjoy the Wind and Thunder Gods, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, a vase that looks like the moon, a treasure box containing a secret, and other works that all contain their own peculiar glimmer.