This is the first time I have encountered works created by Fumiaki Akahane. From looking at the images of his works through the internet or printed materials, it seems to me that his works are characterized by his paranoid drawing, which, like it or not, evokes for me Yayoi Kusama’s works. It can only be said that in creating her works, Kusama tenaciously uses similar motifs, increasing the number of motifs through an obsession with the idea that she must fill all blank spaces. Works which are created by authors who “love themselves”, expressing their own worlds egoistically, or superhuman works which are made by artists such as the Aborigine, Emil Kame Kngwarreye, based on myths - all these works are strengthened by two factors; the pleasure and pain of expressing. These two factors conflict in terms of meaning but are extremely efficient for creating myths about artists. Until looking at Akahane’s works for myself, I considered him as one of those artists who are treated as “geniuses” by others who consider artists as objects of their desire, since these days words such as “outsider” and “Art Brut” are freely used by “healthy people”.

     Nonetheless, as soon as I stood in front of his works displayed at his solo exhibition entitled “Shining Darkness” (17/Apr/2009-14/May/2009) which was held at magical, ARTROOM, I noticed that my view of him was wrong. In this exhibition, what we, the viewers, encounter first are oil paints, the basic color of which is black, applied to the canvas so thickly that we cannot imagine their actual mass. His works give me the impression of a pond in which various animals have been deposited and which make the surface of the water stagnant. And a trail of paint in the shape of something like the fresh cream used to decorate a cake seems to rise spontaneously from the bottom of the canvas. I cannot give concrete names to the motifs of his works as most of these works do not have visible shapes. However, the motifs have one thing in common, which is that they were formed into works which give us a charming image like that of cartoon characters. Indeed, I found objects depicted in his works that looked like a human body, a mouse [fig.1], a plant and a mushroom [fig.2].

     Akahane’s works are said to be characteristic in terms of plainly reflecting the fact that paint is a material. In other words, a drawing is a collection of paints. Therefore, a painting is just an illusion no matter how realistically or how true to life it appears. Akahane affirms strongly rather than resists the adherent nature of oil paints and represents this characteristic to viewers by depicting planar characters which are adapted to be drawn normally using acrylic paint or pens. The materials and motifs used in his works have equal status and there is no order of priority between them. Thus, it is difficult for us to find the motifs used in his works at a glance. However, because of this, his works have a presence that is too strong to be described. If we, the viewers, look down on his works for a while, from a distance rather than looking closely, we find there are some mysterious things wriggling in the paint, rising up from the canvas. How we feel at that time is similar to our surprise when we discover, by using a microscope for the first time, a micro-world which can never be seen with the naked eye. The components of this world are not limited to the things which we can observe.

     Drawing tenaciously and creating works using motifs resembling cartoon characters - these two things allow us to understand easily that an infantile nature is one of the characteristics of his works and this feature will probably be connected easily to current fashions and myths about artists. Nevertheless, when we have doubts about his works, such as “Why does he create his works using such motifs though aggressively utilizing oil paints?” Akahane’s works give us completely new insights.
(Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)

Fumiaki AKAHANE: Shining Darkness
17/Apr/2009 - 14/May/2009
Venue: magical, ARTROOM