Collection: Masanori Ushiki

He grew up surrounded by Japanese character products from the 1980s~90s, as there was a toy store across the street from his childhood home and his father ran a fancy store selling character goods and other items. This led to the creation of Japanese subculture, mainly character-based expressions. In addition, his youth sports experience was connected to the concepts of "fighting," "speed," and "wearing something to protect oneself," which led him to often play with character-based products. These childhood experiences are the basis for the humor in the character's poses and costumes. Based on these childhood experiences, he has been exhibiting and working with clients in Japan and abroad in a style that does not create a specific symbolic image, ranging from humorous and cynical to fashionable expression.

The "VISITORS" project, which began in 2016, presenting one character portrait a day on instagram, currently attracts nearly 40,000 followers and is gaining even more fans through books and goods.

In "VISITORS," there are girls you might see on the street, frog-like characters with sexy lips wearing bow ties, and a woman with octopus hair. Even robots and cartoon characters. Here every motif is deconstructed, denying the obvious combinations and reconstructing them as parts of a kind. Characters that the artists were exposed to in their childhood, such as humans, animals, oddly shaped things like monsters, foods, machines, and even a scene from a manga or anime, are mixed together in the artist's own mind as equivalent motifs and intertwined with contemporary fashion and streetwise zeitgeist, to emerge as new images as characters. The characters are then transformed into new images of themselves. The characters created become images that we never expected to see with a sense of déjà vu of the subcultures of the 1980s and 1990s, and they appear with a reality that we would never have expected. And then they appear with a sense of reality.

We hope you will enjoy the exhibition as much as we do, as there are many goods such as books and stickers available.