The Art of Akira Zakamoto
His experience as a rebirther leads him to retrace the stages of a forgotten childhood, which translates into an essentialist painting where the close-up gazes of infants act as ferrymen of our inner gaze toward a cosmic dimension, ancient and future like the journey Stanley Kubrick has the astronaut Bowman undertake in 2001: A Space Odyssey. To such an odyssey, at once internalised and cosmic, Zakamoto's painting refers; it presents some points of contact with the Japanese aesthetic of manga, comics played exclusively on the emotional and narrative values of the image, which finds in colour an important place for the assimilation of the concept, the exasperation of reality, and the transfiguration of linear space-time into a fanciful image.
In one of his paintings titled The World Watches Us, fairly exemplary of the series, Zakamoto heightens the blue of a child's eyes and his gaze turned toward the immeasurable altitudes of a sidereal space, where at times entire planets shatter. 'For me they signify a change,' says Zakamoto. The child has an inquiring gaze but also one of metaphysical wonder, dictated by the miracle of being here and now, and of being placed before the annihilating magnificence of creation. On his face, a patch of skin shaped like the American continent transforms his real features into a map where macrocosm and microcosm, the universe and man, mirror one another.
The colours fix themselves in these portraits as flat zones of static action, like continents on a 'political' map of the Atlas. Border zones, patchwork, a puzzle of colour-zones that become faces, gazes, questions. The lights and depths are the effect of juxtaposed hues, separated and sewn together, each intent on producing its own result, on developing a fragment of pop language where the disappearance of gradations and the flattening of the chromatic field — made glossy by the use of lacquers — represent an aesthetic declaration.
Zakamoto chooses a filmic, zonal painting, openly inclined toward an artificial simplification of painting so that it may convey primary, essential sensations. A painting that does not seek to distract through the exaltation of detail but to communicate immediately, instinctively, the force of a feeling — that of a childhood lost and rediscovered by Zakamoto through a practice, rebirthing, perhaps comparable to a controlled dream, an inner journey into the recesses of ancestral memories: those of the first years of life of which we have no awareness but which act within us as unconscious mechanisms, as traumas that carve out the personality and perhaps also as dreams, imaginings, desires that determine choices for which, as adults, we can no longer give an exhaustive explanation. As if a karst river flowed within our soul, carving uninterrupted paths to which Zakamoto attempts to give a face.
In one of his paintings titled The World Watches Us, fairly exemplary of the series, Zakamoto heightens the blue of a child's eyes and his gaze turned toward the immeasurable altitudes of a sidereal space, where at times entire planets shatter. 'For me they signify a change,' says Zakamoto. The child has an inquiring gaze but also one of metaphysical wonder, dictated by the miracle of being here and now, and of being placed before the annihilating magnificence of creation. On his face, a patch of skin shaped like the American continent transforms his real features into a map where macrocosm and microcosm, the universe and man, mirror one another.
The colours fix themselves in these portraits as flat zones of static action, like continents on a 'political' map of the Atlas. Border zones, patchwork, a puzzle of colour-zones that become faces, gazes, questions. The lights and depths are the effect of juxtaposed hues, separated and sewn together, each intent on producing its own result, on developing a fragment of pop language where the disappearance of gradations and the flattening of the chromatic field — made glossy by the use of lacquers — represent an aesthetic declaration.
Zakamoto chooses a filmic, zonal painting, openly inclined toward an artificial simplification of painting so that it may convey primary, essential sensations. A painting that does not seek to distract through the exaltation of detail but to communicate immediately, instinctively, the force of a feeling — that of a childhood lost and rediscovered by Zakamoto through a practice, rebirthing, perhaps comparable to a controlled dream, an inner journey into the recesses of ancestral memories: those of the first years of life of which we have no awareness but which act within us as unconscious mechanisms, as traumas that carve out the personality and perhaps also as dreams, imaginings, desires that determine choices for which, as adults, we can no longer give an exhaustive explanation. As if a karst river flowed within our soul, carving uninterrupted paths to which Zakamoto attempts to give a face.
La sua esperienza di rebirther lo porta a ripercorrere tappe di un'infanzia dimenticata, che si traduce in una pittura essenzialista, dove gli sguardi in primo piano di infanti fungono da traghettatori del nostro sguardo interiore verso una dimensione cosmica, antica e futura come il viaggio che Stanley Kubrick fa compiere all'astronauta Bowman in 2001 Odissea nello spazio. Ad una tale odissea, interiorizzata e cosmica al tempo stesso, si riferisce la pittura di Zakamoto, che presenta alcuni punti di contatto con l'estetica giapponese dei manga, fumetti giocati esclusivamente sulle valenze emotive e narrative dell'immagine, che incontra nel colore un importante luogo di assimilazione del concetto, di esasperazione della realtà e di trasfigurazione dello spazio-tempo lineare in immagine fantasiosa.
In un suo dipinto intitolato Il mondo ci osserva, abbastanza esemplificativo della serie, Zakamoto esalta l'azzurro degli occhi di un bimbo e il suo sguardo rivolto verso le altitudini incommensurabili di uno spazio siderale, dove a volte interi pianeti cadono in frantumi. "Per me hanno il significato di un cambiamento", dice Zakamoto. Il bimbo possiede uno sguardo indagatore ma anche di stupore metafisico, dettato dal miracolo di un esserci, qui e ora, e di essere posto di fronte alla magnificenza annichilente del creato. Sul suo volto, una macchia della pelle a forma di continente americano, ne trasforma le fattezze reali in una carta geografica dove macrocosmo e microcosmo, l'universo e l'uomo, si rispecchiano l'uno nell'altro.
I colori si fissano in questi ritratti come zone piatte di azione statica, come continenti di una mappa "politica" dell'Atlante. Zone di confine, patchwork, puzzle di zone-colore che diventano volti, sguardi, domande. Le luci e le profondità sono l'effetto di un accostamento di tinte separate e cucite insieme, ciascuna intenta a produrre un proprio risultato, a sviluppare un frammento di linguaggio pop dove la sparizione delle sfumature, l'appiattimento del campo cromatico reso luccicante dall'uso delle lacche rappresenta una dichiarazione estetica.
Zakamoto sceglie una pittura pellicolare, zonale, dichiaratamente propensa ad una semplificazione artificiale della pittura affinché questa possa trasmettere sensazioni primarie, essenziali. Una pittura che non vuole distogliere attraverso l'esaltazione del particolare ma comunicare immediatamente, istintivamente, la forza di un sentimento che è quello di un'infanzia perduta e ritrovata da Zakamoto attraverso una pratica, quella del rebirthing, che è paragonabile forse ad un sogno controllato, un viaggio interiore nei meandri di ricordi ancestrali, quelli dei primi anni di vita di cui non abbiamo coscienza ma che agiscono dentro di noi come meccanismi inconsci, come traumi che scavano la personalità e forse anche come sogni, immaginazioni, desideri che determinano scelte di cui non sappiamo, ormai adulti, dare una spiegazione esauriente. Come se un fiume carsico scorresse dentro la nostra anima scavandovi sentieri ininterrotti ai quali Zakamoto tenta di dare un volto.
In un suo dipinto intitolato Il mondo ci osserva, abbastanza esemplificativo della serie, Zakamoto esalta l'azzurro degli occhi di un bimbo e il suo sguardo rivolto verso le altitudini incommensurabili di uno spazio siderale, dove a volte interi pianeti cadono in frantumi. "Per me hanno il significato di un cambiamento", dice Zakamoto. Il bimbo possiede uno sguardo indagatore ma anche di stupore metafisico, dettato dal miracolo di un esserci, qui e ora, e di essere posto di fronte alla magnificenza annichilente del creato. Sul suo volto, una macchia della pelle a forma di continente americano, ne trasforma le fattezze reali in una carta geografica dove macrocosmo e microcosmo, l'universo e l'uomo, si rispecchiano l'uno nell'altro.
I colori si fissano in questi ritratti come zone piatte di azione statica, come continenti di una mappa "politica" dell'Atlante. Zone di confine, patchwork, puzzle di zone-colore che diventano volti, sguardi, domande. Le luci e le profondità sono l'effetto di un accostamento di tinte separate e cucite insieme, ciascuna intenta a produrre un proprio risultato, a sviluppare un frammento di linguaggio pop dove la sparizione delle sfumature, l'appiattimento del campo cromatico reso luccicante dall'uso delle lacche rappresenta una dichiarazione estetica.
Zakamoto sceglie una pittura pellicolare, zonale, dichiaratamente propensa ad una semplificazione artificiale della pittura affinché questa possa trasmettere sensazioni primarie, essenziali. Una pittura che non vuole distogliere attraverso l'esaltazione del particolare ma comunicare immediatamente, istintivamente, la forza di un sentimento che è quello di un'infanzia perduta e ritrovata da Zakamoto attraverso una pratica, quella del rebirthing, che è paragonabile forse ad un sogno controllato, un viaggio interiore nei meandri di ricordi ancestrali, quelli dei primi anni di vita di cui non abbiamo coscienza ma che agiscono dentro di noi come meccanismi inconsci, come traumi che scavano la personalità e forse anche come sogni, immaginazioni, desideri che determinano scelte di cui non sappiamo, ormai adulti, dare una spiegazione esauriente. Come se un fiume carsico scorresse dentro la nostra anima scavandovi sentieri ininterrotti ai quali Zakamoto tenta di dare un volto.
His experience as a rebirther leads him to retrace the stages of a forgotten childhood, which translates into an essentialist painting where the close-up gazes of infants act as ferrymen of our inner gaze toward a cosmic dimension, ancient and future like the journey Stanley Kubrick has the astronaut Bowman undertake in 2001: A Space Odyssey. To such an odyssey, at once internalised and cosmic, Zakamoto's painting refers; it presents some points of contact with the Japanese aesthetic of manga, comics played exclusively on the emotional and narrative values of the image, which finds in colour an important place for the assimilation of the concept, the exasperation of reality, and the transfiguration of linear space-time into a fanciful image.
In one of his paintings titled The World Watches Us, fairly exemplary of the series, Zakamoto heightens the blue of a child's eyes and his gaze turned toward the immeasurable altitudes of a sidereal space, where at times entire planets shatter. 'For me they signify a change,' says Zakamoto. The child has an inquiring gaze but also one of metaphysical wonder, dictated by the miracle of being here and now, and of being placed before the annihilating magnificence of creation. On his face, a patch of skin shaped like the American continent transforms his real features into a map where macrocosm and microcosm, the universe and man, mirror one another.
The colours fix themselves in these portraits as flat zones of static action, like continents on a 'political' map of the Atlas. Border zones, patchwork, a puzzle of colour-zones that become faces, gazes, questions. The lights and depths are the effect of juxtaposed hues, separated and sewn together, each intent on producing its own result, on developing a fragment of pop language where the disappearance of gradations and the flattening of the chromatic field — made glossy by the use of lacquers — represent an aesthetic declaration.
Zakamoto chooses a filmic, zonal painting, openly inclined toward an artificial simplification of painting so that it may convey primary, essential sensations. A painting that does not seek to distract through the exaltation of detail but to communicate immediately, instinctively, the force of a feeling — that of a childhood lost and rediscovered by Zakamoto through a practice, rebirthing, perhaps comparable to a controlled dream, an inner journey into the recesses of ancestral memories: those of the first years of life of which we have no awareness but which act within us as unconscious mechanisms, as traumas that carve out the personality and perhaps also as dreams, imaginings, desires that determine choices for which, as adults, we can no longer give an exhaustive explanation. As if a karst river flowed within our soul, carving uninterrupted paths to which Zakamoto attempts to give a face.
In one of his paintings titled The World Watches Us, fairly exemplary of the series, Zakamoto heightens the blue of a child's eyes and his gaze turned toward the immeasurable altitudes of a sidereal space, where at times entire planets shatter. 'For me they signify a change,' says Zakamoto. The child has an inquiring gaze but also one of metaphysical wonder, dictated by the miracle of being here and now, and of being placed before the annihilating magnificence of creation. On his face, a patch of skin shaped like the American continent transforms his real features into a map where macrocosm and microcosm, the universe and man, mirror one another.
The colours fix themselves in these portraits as flat zones of static action, like continents on a 'political' map of the Atlas. Border zones, patchwork, a puzzle of colour-zones that become faces, gazes, questions. The lights and depths are the effect of juxtaposed hues, separated and sewn together, each intent on producing its own result, on developing a fragment of pop language where the disappearance of gradations and the flattening of the chromatic field — made glossy by the use of lacquers — represent an aesthetic declaration.
Zakamoto chooses a filmic, zonal painting, openly inclined toward an artificial simplification of painting so that it may convey primary, essential sensations. A painting that does not seek to distract through the exaltation of detail but to communicate immediately, instinctively, the force of a feeling — that of a childhood lost and rediscovered by Zakamoto through a practice, rebirthing, perhaps comparable to a controlled dream, an inner journey into the recesses of ancestral memories: those of the first years of life of which we have no awareness but which act within us as unconscious mechanisms, as traumas that carve out the personality and perhaps also as dreams, imaginings, desires that determine choices for which, as adults, we can no longer give an exhaustive explanation. As if a karst river flowed within our soul, carving uninterrupted paths to which Zakamoto attempts to give a face.