Yutaka Inagawa


Yutaka Inagawa is a Japanese artist trained in painting, line drawing, and photography who specialises in exploiting digital photomontage.

Biography

Born in Tokyo, Japan, he grew up in the Ikebukuro district. In 1997, he graduated first in his class at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, then went on to gain a master's degree in fine arts in 2004 from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, England. Since then he has lived and worked in London.
His art blends the delicate and the grotesque, juxtaposing photographic fragments, line art and painting to produce complex abstract works. His work is inspired by the uneasy lack of harmony between tradition and modernity in the fast-paced, constantly changing urban world. He sees parallels between his work and the way in which his home city, Tokyo, has absorbed western conventions into Japanese culture without any proper synthesis or reconciliation. He builds his organic-looking images from bizarre collections of carefully cut out photographic elements - including machinery, fish, road signs, leaves, weapons, furniture - the everyday alongside the unusual - the threatening with the benign - but skillfully intertwined so that the original forms are almost indiscernible.
Inagawa's work has been on display in numerous exhibitions throughout the world. He was shortlisted for the Celeste Art Prize in both 2006 and 2007.

Exhibitions