New harmony in everyday life

Clouds and octopuses are intertwined, and flowers and birds are depicted as if they are playing with the swells. The screen features thickly outlined lines and a striking light blue color. WOK22 is a graphic artist who creates a worldview that stimulates the imagination the more you look at it, even with a very limited number of colors. This is a solo exhibition by the artist who also participated in "Freestyle Asians," a group exhibition of six Asian artists that was the opening exhibition of YUGEN Gallery in 2023.

WOK22 has loved gazing at the sky since he was a child, and letting his imagination run wild with the clouds that change shape and look different depending on the light brings him peace of mind. He says that looking at the sky while smelling the scent of the grass during the season of fresh green leaves is a particularly blissful time, and he is inspired by overlapping natural elements such as the scent of autumn leaves and sunlight filtering through the trees.

This exhibition, "W FLOW," features around 20 paintings that evoke the blending and harmonizing of things that touch the five senses in everyday life, such as the wind, the scent of flowers, and the hustle and bustle of the city, as well as works using LED neon lights, which he has been working on in recent years. He likens the vibrations emitted by nature and manmade objects to the flow of a great river, and depicts the emotions that well up inside him as he immerses himself in it.

Expressing "connections" through clouds and tentacles

WOK22 was born in Aichi Prefecture in 1986. He moved to Fukuoka as a child and is currently based there. He has collaborated with a wide range of brands, from global brands such as STUSSY and Adidas to traditional crafts such as Hakata dolls and Fukuoka's Koishiwara ware.

As a child, he was fascinated by the coolness of record jackets, especially the omnibus album "Christmas Aid" series, which featured Keith Haring's work on the cover of his mother's records. Aspiring to be a musician, he played in a band during his adolescence, but he also came to realize that "good music has a good jacket" after buying CDs and records for their covers.

"I only thought about my future in bands or painting, but slowly I started to develop a desire to create graphics and art."

After graduating from a design college, he started live painting in the club scene while working at a company. He started live painting because he was invited to do it, and although he says he found it boring at first, the style of WOK22's work, which he describes as "not the so-called graffiti art," caught the eye of organizers, and word spread from there that his activities fusing music and painting would spread.

At the time, painters active in the club scene were invited to participate in art projects planned as commercial facilities such as Parco began to expand into Fukuoka, and WOK22 also raised its stage and developed its style with a street style, moving from underground to the overground. The works on the theme of "connections," in which WOK22's motley crew move freely through the space and interact with each other, and the depiction of space with a sense of unity demonstrated in live paintings, can be said to have risen out of the relationship between art, people, and society.

Clouds as Symbols of Truth

"Clouds and tentacles have long been motifs for me. Both have a floating feeling, and I feel a free softness that entangles them in various spaces and objects. When I draw the emotions that arise in my everyday life and the sensations that arise in response to the atmosphere of the venue during live painting, the tentacles become like clouds, and the clouds become like tentacle patterns."

He has been drawing clouds and tentacles for a long time. Recently, he says, these motifs have become inseparable and integrated into something that cannot be described as anything. This is influenced by his experience in Hokkaido, where he visited to participate in an art project.

"In Hokkaido, the clouds were so close that I could almost reach out and touch them, and what had previously looked like large masses now looked like a collection of tiny, cell-like living organisms. They moved slowly and connected together, constantly changing shape, and just when it seemed to have taken shape, it vanished. I also felt a sense of transience there."

WOK22 depicts a "new harmony" that is born when different elements connect without making assumptions or pandering. Here, clouds emerge as a symbol of the truth that humans can never grasp. The harmony we strive for beyond conflict is as grand as a cloud, yet it is something that can easily slip away. Here is our graffiti, living our lives as if grasping for clouds.