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The Invisible World

井口 真吾 Shingo IGUCHI

2023.10.14 – 12.10

Shanghai

E-CATALOGUE

In the 2010 Shanghai World Expo commemorative print project undertaken by Shun Art Gallery, Shingo IGUCHI was the only cartoonist among the 13 top artists from China and Japan.

After a lapse of 11 years, Iguchi collaborated again with the new space in Tokyo. Iguchi’s works have evolved to have a strong sense of extradimensional space. The characters Z Chan and Rose, who once appeared in his comics, are not only occasionally shown with Vanrogh in the same frame, but sometimes partial figures are also drawn. There is a sense of overlooking, from plane to three-dimensional, to the invisible world, and commonly created characters derived from the Arabic alphabet.

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About the artist

井口真吾 肖像

In 1984, Iguchi launched the “Z PLAN” project, aiming to explore the possibility of characters and virtual worlds. Iguchi takes the world of the little boy “Z CHAN” marked by a magic hat and eyepatch as the main line, and presents a unique world full of philosophical hints and mysteries through comics, picture books, novels, poems, illustrations, paintings, performances, music, etc. While being disturbed by the real world, this world advances in parallel in another space.

Iguchi disassembled and reconstructed the constituent elements of the “Z CHAN” manga to form a concise and distinct painting style. The “Z” on the little boy’s hat hides multiple metaphors, and the Z of Zen is one of them. The aesthetics of Zen is the cornerstone of Iguchi’s works. Simple black and white lines form the basis of spatial expression, reminiscent of the dialogues of Zen「ぜんもんどう」.

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