Koji Kakinuma - Traveling Alone

Koji Kakinuma is one of the most prominent figures on the contemporary Japanese art scene. He uses a unique combination of calligraphy, free creation and performance in his works. He gained widespread recognition for his distinctive artistic performances, during which he uses giant brushes to create monumental paintings in rapid succession while accompanied by traditional musical instruments, striking a balance between calligraphy and action painting. He further developed this artistic expression through so-called infinitely repeated sentences, emphasising the individual forms of the calligraphic techniques used. He has now added calligraphic tape work to these two styles, writing his messages on paper with quickly torn adhesive tape of various thicknesses in formats similar to traditional horizontal scrolls, but on a monumental scale.

Koji Kakinuma (*1970) is a Japanese artist born in Yaita, on the island of Honshu. He began studying Japanese calligraphy at the age of five, first learning from his father, Suiryua Kakinuma, and then from the highly respected artists Yukei Teshima and Ichijo Uematsu. He graduated from the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Tokyo Gakugei University. In 2006–2007, he was a visiting scholar at Princeton University in the USA.