MASATAKE KOUZAKI

Since winning the UBS Art Award from London’s White Chapel Gallery in 2000, Masatake Kouzaki’s work has been widely exhibited internationally. In the last decade, he has shown at the Sato Museum, the Fukushima Museum, the Koriyama Museum, and the Futyu Museum in his native Japan. Intensively trained in the traditional Nihonga technique of Japanese painting at Tokyo National University, where he gained his doctorate in 2005, Kouzaki uses a unique combination of traditional materials (ground mineral pigments, gold and silver leaf on rice paper) with modern oil and acrylic paints. The artist has also worked extensively with relief application in the form of foil molds, innovating this centuries old technique. Kouzaki has received numerous awards and extensive critical recognition for his creative approach to Nihonga.

Kouzaki’s paintings explore a unique vision of diverse characters, by combining animals and plants, and real and mythical creatures into new creations. Kouzaki sees his imaginative conceptions as intimately tied to advances in science and industry. By depicting humans as transformed, hybrid characters, he makes us reflect on humanities self-identification.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 

• 2008 Gallery Sougei Koubou, Fukushima, Japan
  Keiyudo Gallery Tokyo, Japan
• 2007 Gallery Yamate, Yokohama, Japan
  Gallery MoMo Tokyo, Japan
• 2006 Surugadai Gallery, L’ESPOIR Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan
  PODOCARPUS Gallery Fukuoka, Japan
  Gallery Art Point Tokyo, Japan
  Keiyudo Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
• 2005 Gallery Sawada Kawasaki, Japan
  Keiyudo Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
• 2003 Kan Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
• 2002 Keiyudo Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
• 2001 2+ Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

Museum Exhibitions

• 2007 Sato Museum, Tokyo, Japan
• 2005 24th Outstanding Rising Artists Exhibition in 2005, presented by Sompo Japan Art
  Foundation, Sompo Japan Museum, Tokyo, Japan
  Fukushima Museum, New Spirits Fukushima, Fukushima, Japan
• 2004 Ishibashi Museum,The 13th Memorial Exhibition of AOKI SIGERU, Fukuoka, Japan
  Koriyama Museum, Fukushima, Japan
  Futyu Museum, Naka-michi Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan
• 2003 Futyu Museum, Naka-michi Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan