Kunstraum Richard Sorge

Hiroki Otsuka

Intro

Hiroki Otsuka: Ero-Pop Art

Brooklyn-based Japanese artist Hiroki Otsuka "is undergoing an exciting shift in his career, and looking at his recent output, he is doing so with great ease and acumen. A Manga illustrator for the past thirteen years with a strong penchant for the erotic storylines of pornographic manga aimed at straight Japanese men, Otsuka has shifted gears and is now producing deeply disturbing paintings based on the unstable nature of sexuality in contemporary Japan."

After spending a few years in Tokyo, Otsuka, like many other Japanese artists, went abroad, living in San Francisco, and currently in New York, where he has worked for the Takashi Murakami studio and exhibited with such artists as Yoko Ono and Yasunao Tone. He has recently executed large-scale murals for the Japan Society (NY) and exhibited at the MOCA Museum in LA, Pittsburgh University Art Gallery and Berlin's Kunstraum Richard Sorge.

In his drawings and paintings, Otsuka makes an elegant transition from Manga to erotic Fine Art, applying intriguing gender twists to his uninhibited explorations of sexuality. Warhol Museum curator and Japanese modern art expert Eric C. Shiner has written: "Otsuka's works delve into our own experiences of the carnal; whether straight, gay, trans-gendered or otherwise, these works speak to the diversity of sexuality."

Not only the Manga, but also the Ukyo-e tradition are taken up in Otsuka's work, as are a Warhol-like seriality and the Manga-related Cosplay phenomenon. The expected "kawaii" (cute) elements are pushed into the eerie, hollow and grotesque in his murals and works on paper. Trans-gender and trans-species, the figures tend to be obsessed with brands, even seeming to be branded themselves.

Hiroki Otsuka acted as Mangaka-in-Residence (comic book illustrator) artist-in-residence at Japan Society NYC during its spring 2010 exhibition Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection. Taking the mass-produced color woodblock prints of late period Ukiyo-e master and forerunner of Manga Utagawa Kuniyoshi as his vantage point, Otsuka created an original full-length manga, often working onsite visible to visitors.

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Kunstraum Richard Sorge, Landsberger Allee 54, Old Brewery, 10249 Berlin-Friedrichshain
Email: richard.sorge (at) nym.hush (dot) com
Homepage: http://www.kunstraumrichardsorge.org