Everyone must restrain his desires in a group. We have to communicate with others, keeping real intentions for ourselves and wearing the mask of social roles. I know this since I am a kid. But once the night comes, restrained spirits are released. Darkness melt the doors of our expansive hearts. My wavelength tunes in to the anonymous sight of the night in a corner of town, to a moment in the everyday night. I rely and identify with sights and moments. They are the irreplaceable ground of what I believe. So, I want to keep them in full without a change, together with all the signs and yearnings I felt at the time. In order to pile dozens or hundreds of pencil strokes, I clearly come to feel “I am keeping the sight and the moment”. I fill a support medium with my thoughts like working with a weaving loom.
Hiroki Yasutomi
Pencil is the most familiar writing instrument for Japanese generations born after WWII. Before they enter into elementary school, children start using pencil, drawing familiar things and imagining landscapes in the margins of the papers. For grown up’s the pencil is such a useful way to sketch our mind during these insipid meetings. For many Japanese, it is an extension of the body. This is why there are so many artists who use pencils not only for drawing but also tableaux. From experts like Susumu Kinoshita, Norio Shinoda, and Naoko Majima to up-and-coming artists like Hiroki Yasutomi.
Born in Kagawa prefecture, Hiroki Yasutomi moved to the Kansai region to attend college, and he has produced works in pencil since his graduate school days. The multilayered touches of the pencil as it tries to engrave the traces of Hiroki’s work creates the gradation of a fine woven cloth. It is the simple and strong beauty of forms and light extracted from common scenery like a silent movie of the past century. It is the depiction of water shaped by the climate of his hometown and the pictorial spaces which make us feel like we are there. Because of the attraction like that, he drew attention of people in art world from his student days, and he was selected in L’Espoir Exhibition which is a gateway to success for young artists to show their works in Ginza, Tokyo. In 2006, he received the Excellence Prize as the second place at Outstanding Rising Artists Exhibition, Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Museum of Art. He held solo exhibition at Imura Art Gallery in the same year, at Takamatsu Tenmaya in 2007, at Kurashiki Tenmaya in 2009, at Shinjuku Takashimaya in 2012.
Hiroki’s work has also been exhibited in museums, educational institutions, and group shows with the artists he respects. In 2008, he held solo exhibition at Nagi Museum Of Contemporary Art. At the exhibition titled Pencil World at Chukyo University C-Square, they selected him with Susumu Kinoshita and the other experts. In 2007 and 2009, at the three person’s show, he presented with Masaaki Yashima whom he has respected since his college days. Often featuring white roses as motif in recent years, in 2012, he was selected with Koji Kinutani, Reiji Hiramatsu and Hiroshi Noda and the other leading artists in LA VIE EN ROSE, a group show focusing on work with a rose theme.
Hiroki has exhibited not only in Japan but throughout Asia. His work was presented at KIAF 2006 in Seoul, and CIGE 2008 in Beijing. His works have been introduced to the secondary market through Christie’s and Sotheby’s Hong Kong.
Biography
| Born in Kagawa, Japan | |
| 2004 | M.F.A., in Kyoto University of Art and Design, Kyoto |