Naoto Kawahara — Naoto Kawahara

, Zeno X Books , 2007 Hardcover, 64 pages, 125 x 170 mm, English text. *NEW . Naoto Kawahara, b. 1971 in Tokyo (JP), lives and works in Tokyo (JP). Naoto Kawahara?s painted women seduce us with their beautiful, soft-skinned young bodies and absent-minded faces. His highly sophisticated formal language goes beyond its many hidden references to art history to reveal a rich fantasy full of strong but subtle erotic undertones. His Japanese models refer to the classical works of Degas, Balthus, Dürer, Magritte, Van Gogh, Munch and other masters of historical Western art. Kawahara reinterprets the masterworks by mentally reimagining and repicturing. The paintings emerge from photographs Kawahara took himself as a sort of diary. He photographs his models in a specific setting and then starts the process of painting. The combination of Japanese and Western imagery can be misleading for viewers who look at the images within the context of their own culture. The works created by Kawahara play with our cultural imprints, our misunderstandings and false interpretations, and with our culture-specific concepts of beauty.