STANDING PINE

Youki Hirakawa was born in Nagoya in 1983 and stayed in Germany after completing his master’s degree until 2016. He currently lives and works in Aichi prefecture. By unravelling history and structure of things and manipulating the relationship between them, he has presented works with various media including film, three-dimensional works, installation and so on.

His works have been exhibited in many international museums and galleries and invited to international film festivals such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands) and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (Germany). He has also participated in group exhibitions at the National Archives of Singapore, Salisbury Cathedral and Durham Cathedral (UK), the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art (Israel), and the Graves Gallery (UK). Additionally, his works have been featured in the Taipei Digital Art Festival (Taiwan), Sapporo International Art Festival, Aichi Triennale, and the International Art Festival Kaunas In Art (Lithuania), among others.

During the long COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2019, Hirakawa experienced a mystical event, which led to a shift in his work from monochrome video pieces to vibrant, ready-made object-based artworks. In his "Forever Fresh" series, which features beer cans covered with resin drops, he addresses the universal theme of making a moment eternal. This series humorously presents the stagnant time of the prolonged pandemic and the reality of the aging body. Inspired by the sizzling drops used in advertising photography to convey the impression of freshness, these resin drops have since appeared frequently in his other works. For example, stainless steel laundry racks covered with droplets give the impression of condensation due to temperature differences with the outside world. This contradictory state of a drying apparatus being wet reflects the humidity difference that Hirakawa has experienced while traveling between Europe and Asia.

In "Sensor," Hirakawa uses silver paint to cover imported pornographic magazines blacked out by censorship, expressing the inferiority complex and admiration for Western culture formed during his adolescence. The black paint, subtly scraped away by the buyer's efforts, represents the desire to see and the very shape of that longing. While maintaining a minimalistic appearance, this work critically addresses the identity issues faced by an Asian artist working in a predominantly Western-centric contemporary art world.

As Hirakawa states, "Art is the power to resist time." His sharp focus on the very structure of objects and his consistent curiosity about the elusive nature of time connect his diverse body of work. In post-pandemic society, the meaning of shared space and time has undergone significant change. It was a difficult period for artists, where space is closed off and time is heavy and strained. Oddly, the rupture in the creative work process becomes a source for new inspiration, bearing new work. Hirakawa’s works question, with a sense of humour, the concept of space and time that has been redefined through unprecedented change, as well as the structure and relation of things.

Powered by Froala Editor