Atsushi Koyama, 1978 | Humans and Machines

Born in Tokyo, Atsushi Koyama / 小山 篤 is a visual artist from Japan. He holds both a BFA in art from Tama Art University and a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Tokyo University of Science in 2008.

Koyama’s work clearly uses the backgrounds of his tutelage as he beautifully blends anatomical illustration with mechanical diagrams.

METAMACHINE is his collaborative project at the border of visual art and electronic music.

Although the meaning behind these oil paintings by Atsushi Koyama is somewhat ambiguous, it’s easy to appreciate the exactness of his paintbrush that colorfully and elegantly depicts mechanical diagrams mixed with anatomical illustrations.

While he ultimately used oil paints for this work, Koyama focused on the actual process of painting and explored the boundary between art and science using a unique approach, going so far as developing his own painting aid machine.

Koyama creates unique paintings that challenge our understanding of the relation between organic and mechanical, art and science.

Inspired by the historical perspective of Da Vinci’s drawings and contemporary engineering plans, Koyama’s paintings challenge the function of mechanisms, deconstruct space-time perspective, and re-inform our way of interacting with these apparatuses.

He has had solo exhibitions at Tokyo Wonder Site, Makii Masaru Fine Arts, Frantic Gallery, and others, and has participated in many group exhibitions and art fairs in Japan and abroad.

Artist statement

- "I don’t transfer what I have caught and understood in my head onto a picture plane, but just draw things because I cannot digest them. I want to see the vestige of what I selected and how I drew through the working process. Thus, my artworks focus on my activity of creation".

- "I confirm a thing which I cannot understand just by looking at it through use of pictures and additional lines. During that process, I found that what has emerged in front of me forms an artwork. This means, I think, that there was something which had to be output from my head. I don’t need to output things if I’m satisfied with them. So, something that urged me to draw was there. I wondered whether or not this is the nature of creativity then.

The purpose of drawing is to confirm what I selected and ignored as well as in what way I depicted a thing through the output as a result of trial and error on picture plane myself; it is not to reproduce a thing on picture plane as medium to express completed image.

Whatever the motif is, I consider art to be the state of communicating with a picture plane to understand the motif and confirm my understanding of it. My interest is not to read concepts of artists' works, but is in the vestige of how they worked and what they did" - Atsushi Koyama.

Nato a Tokyo, l'artista raffinato Atsushi Koyama / 小山 篤 ha conseguito sia un BFA in arte presso la Tama Art University che una laurea in matematica presso la Tokyo University of Science.

Sebbene il significato dietro i dipinti ad olio di Atsushi Koyama sia alquanto ambiguo, è facile apprezzare l'esattezza del suo pennello che raffigura in modo colorato ed elegante diagrammi meccanici mescolati con illustrazioni anatomiche.

Mentre alla fine ha utilizzato i colori ad olio per questo lavoro, Koyama si è concentrato sul processo reale della pittura ed ha esplorato il confine tra arte e scienza, utilizzando un approccio unico, arrivando al punto di sviluppare la propria macchina per l'aiuto alla pittura.

L'artista giapponese Atsushi Koyama crea dipinti unici che sfidano la nostra comprensione della relazione tra organico e meccanico, arte e scienza.

Ispirandosi alla prospettiva storica dei disegni di Da Vinci ed ai piani di ingegneria contemporanei, i dipinti di Koyama sfidano la funzione dei meccanismi, decostruiscono la prospettiva spazio-temporale e reinventano il nostro modo di interagire con questi apparati.

Atsushi Koyama Ha tenuto mostre personali al Tokyo Wonder Site, Makii Masaru Fine Arts, Frantic Gallery ed altri, e ha partecipato a molte mostre collettive e fiere d'arte in Giappone ed all'estero.