Ever the provocative and cool Pablo Picasso unchecked the box surreal and abstract art, and justified his cubist proposal as hyperrealism. Picasso said that, compared to the realist canon, which he intended to show the images of the world “as they are”, he was no more attached to “reality” than his geometric and distorted cubist aesthetic.
Picasso claimed that he was the true realist, since a realistic image painted from the front does not show all the other sides and angles of a face, for example, the nape. What he, in the deconstructed idea of his forms, did show. A great explanation of surrealism and the absurdity of classifying art in conceptual straitjackets.
Well, within that definition the sculptural work of Yoshitoshi Kanemaki, who shows in his carvings in wood a complete, fused study of faces on the body of a character. As if in a single figure he wanted to show all the possible expression options that a face has.
Turning heads isn't the only thing Yoshitoshi Kanemaki's sculptures do, but the twisted, fused faces of his bizarre works are their most prominent feature. His metaphorical and contemplative pieces seem like anatomical flaws in the bodies of young women, as if movement and time collided with each other.
This sculptor, a graduate of the Sculpture Department of Tama University of Art, has been a major Japanese artist in recent years, thanks to his work trippand. Although his work can be disturbing at times, covering very familiar themes.
The wheel of faces and the various emotions that are often found in his work are a symbol of the ever-changing mood and inner indecision of people; Kanemaki says that "everyone has questions or inconsistencies that they can never answer" and translates this into his art.
He also dwells on the subject of mortality: he creates sculptures that represent human skeletons and faces of pain. However, as dark as it may seem, Kanemaki talks about it with a feeling of acceptance, as it is essential for life and development.
Although he claims to be “very contemporary” as an artist, Kanemaki uses ancient Japanese sculpting techniques and camphor wood, a type of material used for traditional furniture and religious sculptures in East Asia.
Even if Yoshitoshi Kanemaki's humanizing vision of contemporary art seems eccentric, his multifaceted sculptures of girls speak for many people.
Fusing smiles and sad eyes, this is his way of connecting the abnormal with the normal.. This is his way of presenting his surreal imagination in a hyper-real way.