With Grotesque female creatures, atomic lightbeams, skulls, Pop monsters and ukiyo-e decoration... These polychromic hallucinations of a Master of Psychedelic art were inspired by a near-death experience.
Metaphor for life, bridge is a central motif of the works gathered in this publication. The source of this project lies in the serious illness Keiichi Tanaami contracted at the age of 45. Medications prescribed were to give him strong hallucinations. Tanaami share his memories of these visions, in between dream and consciousness at the gates of death.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at at Mizuma Gallery, Singapore, in 2013.
Keiichi Tanaami (1936-2024) is looked upon as the forerunner of
Japanese Pop Art and is one of the country's most influential artists. Born in Tokyo as the son of a textile wholesaler, he was nine years old when he experienced the bombing of Tokyo towards the end of World
War II. He studied at the Musahino Art University, visited
Andy Warhol in New York in 1969, worked with both
Robert Rauschenberg and art critic
Michel Tapié during their travels to Japan, and designed record covers for Jefferson Airplane and The Monkees.
He maintained a successful career as an illustrator and a graphic designer throughout the 1960s and early '70s, and was appointed as the first artistic director of the Japanese edition of
Playboy magazine in 1975. With an infinite artistic appetite, Tanaami continued to work across all boundaries, embracing painting, sculpture, performance and film, as well as a professor on the Faculty of Information Design at the Kyoto University of Art and Design in Japan.
