TENMYOUYA HISASHI

Whitestone Gallery is honoured to present BASARA CORE: The World of Tenmyouya Hisashi. This exhibition is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Whitestone Taipei and is a new attempt to arrange the new ‘CORE’ abstract painting series in the same space together with the ‘BASARA’ artworks. The figurative and the abstract, the classic and the novel, will clash with each other, creating a space that resonates in Whitestone Taipei. BASARA CORE incorporates ‘Neo-Nihonga’ and ‘Meta-Nihonga’, taking the audience shuttle between the world and alternative dimensions of Tenmyouya Hisashi.

As a representative of ‘The Fighters’, Tenmyouya has consistently depicted heroic images in the history and context of Japanese art, from the raging gods of the mythical world, armoured warriors, Edo knights, and modern Sentai heroes. BASARA was originally the social trend of the Northern and Southern dynasties in Japan; it referred to a kind of rebellion in the Warring States period. BASARA is a genealogy of gorgeous and destructive beauty that is the opposite of wabi, sabi, and zen, which are the representatives of Japanese culture. Tenmyouya’s aesthetics of BASARA presents the dialogue between the tradition and the contemporary. The beautiful, decorative style and imposing rebellious power can be seen from works such as Sword God, Spear God, and Japanese Spirit No.18.

The ‘CORE’ series not only embodies the world of Tenmyouya, but it also injects new life into the BASARA aesthetics. In his new abstract painting series ‘CORE’, there is a somewhat sci-fi image of colours being sucked into or expelled from the black hole. The ‘CORE’ series is also conceived as a new genealogy following Japanese abstract art represented by Gutai and Mono-ha, including the Circle by Jiro Yoshihara, Ukiyo-e by Hokusai Katsushika, the explosion scene in the anime AKIRA, and pixel dots in the digital era are sources of inspiration. After the great East Japan earthquake in 2011 and the global epidemic of the coronavirus that began in 2019, Tenmyouya’s new series ‘CORE’ draws empty circles of unprecedented turmoil such as premonitions of collapse and dimensional rifts.