Yuichi Hirako Japan, b. 1982

Yuichi Hirako has been exploring the coexistence and interdependent relationship between nature, flora, fauna, and humans with his styles full of metaphors and symbols. Through the hybrid character, he utilizes the diverse qualities of painting, sculpture and installation to create a three-dimensional representation of the unique themes behind his work.   

Born and raised in Okayama Prefecture in Japan, a prefecture with a rich natural environment, he began to realize during his time at university in London that the main reason for urban green spaces and interior plants was to provide human comfort. He became conscious of the question of whether it was their fate to be transplanted into artificial places, subjected to basic growth controls, and then die out. He developed this into the central theme that underpins his work.

The central plot of his work is that a human-like character lives a nomadic existence in a forest on the other side of the world, living in symbiosis with other sub-features including cats and dogs. Deploying these characters plays a key role in multiplying the work's complex narrative, building detailed storylines that diverge in layers from the central theme. When the group of artists presenting character-based paintings is attracting considerable attention in this contemporary era, Hirako’s practice manages to obtain its singularity as he not only organically combines classical art with formal aesthetics and structural mechanism of the current media art but internalizes them.

 

Yuichi Hirako lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. He received a BFA from Wimbledon College of Art in London. He has held solo exhibitions at numerous museums including Space K Seoul (2023), Nerima Art Museum (2022) and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2018). While he has a solo exhibition Mount Mariana (2021) and a group exhibition Cygnus Loop (2019) at Gallery Baton, his work has been featured in exhibition in Powerlong Museum (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2010), Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo (2013), Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (2010).  His works are included in the collections of Lisser Art Museum, AkzoNovel Art Foundation in Netherlands, Jean Pigozzi Collection in Switzerland.