Title: Zodiac Tiger
Year: 2022
Technique: Oil pastel on Drawing paper
Size: 2270×1580mm

In Japan, there is a custom of 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, and a different animal is named for a different year each year. It is said that it is good luck to display a picture or ornament of that animal. At the beginning of the year of the tiger, I painted many pictures of tigers, and this picture was purchased by an elementary school boy who liked it. I thought the boy would like a stronger-looking tiger. I thought he might like a stronger tiger, but surprisingly he chose the one with the gentlest expression. I also love this tiger's expression.

Critical text review by Senior Art Curator Lisa Galletti

In Asuka's works, every scratch, every trace of color, every spot of pigment come together to create a vivid and extensive narrative through a visual language that transcends the surface of the work, revealing intricate and complex layers. Amid the chromatic chaos, the characters become witnesses to a narrative beyond time and space where the present merges with sweet memory shaping stories woven with the universal language of color and sign. The work becomes a meditation on the essence of reality and the symbols that govern it, interpreted through the unique lens of creativity and artistic freedom. In a realm steeped in pulsating colors, Asuka, mastering oil pastel as a medium of expression, shapes works that fall outside the classical definitions of reality.
Intense hues, bursting with tangible force from the surface of the paper, create an emotional kaleidoscope of colors that dance in the viewer's eye. Characters drawn with scratched lines, inspired by the aesthetics of Art Brut, emerge as enigmatic figures, each with a story revealed through deep marks, signs of an animic depth, scars of the soul exposed to the light. Extremely vivid colors become poetic tools of expression, conveying a pure and irrepressible energy. At the same time, scratched lines, indelible marks on paper, reveal the fiery expressiveness of Asuka's creative spark.
In this fusion of oil pastel and scraped lines, a world is painted that resists conventional categories, defying the predefined patterns of art. There are no rules, no academism: there is only the pure distillation of reality that makes the soul, the essence of things exude from the representation. The works serve as an invitation to explore the unspeakable, a call to immerse oneself in the pure energy of artistic creation. In this context, Asuka stands as demiurge, creator of universes in which the ethos of form dances endlessly with the poetry of color. Every trace, every scratch, constitutes a step in this visual choreography, engaging the viewer in a timeless dialogue with the work itself.