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Hideaki Kawashima's paintings are filled with luminous, full red lips and large, marble-like eyes. Following an ardent tradition of portraiture, he is interested in the features of people that are burned into our memories. Kawashima made his first splash with a slender version of St. Sebastian punctured by three arrows, but since then his focus has turned to studies of feminine heads with piercing eyes. Crafted with pristine realism, these works have ventured into the gothic, the enchanted, and the carefree. Abstracted, simply but fetchingly, with contours of balloon-shaped heads and wisps of hair, the figures are delicate and dainty, but they have been dealt both Boschian blows and Brueghelian delights to arrest the roving eye. Kawashima, who studied with Yoshimoto Nara and served a two-year stint as a Buddhist monk, is no stranger to the strange. Influenced by Mark Ryden and Pierre et Gilles, he and his otherworldly figures plot out an ethereal vision that is gaining popularity throughout Asia, Europe, and now in the States — seducing with eyes, lips, and all. |
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