HIRAKU SUZUKI

Hiraku Suzuki considers “drawing” as an intermediary space between imagery and language. His exploration spans various art forms, including two-dimensional works, sculpture, installations, murals, video, and performance. Utilizing light-reflective mediums often in the artworks, he develops the theory of deconstructing the traces of signs that are distributed in our everyday world and rearranging them through a physical implementation to generate new circuitry in space and time. Inspired by diverse spheres that range from calligraphy to art history, experimental music notation to street art, the artist describes his method as “alternative archaeology”. Traversing boundaries between the past and the future, the light and the shade, or the internal and the external, Suzuki continues to expand and excavate the field of drawing.

Hiraku Suzuki has shown in exhibitions at a long list of prestigious museums throughout Japan and internationally including The Museum of Modern Art in Gunma (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2019-2020); Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art, China (2016); Wroclaw Architectural Museum, Poland (2015); Kunstraum Düsseldorf, Germany (2015); Maison de la culture du Japon a Paris, France (2015); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2012); Location One, New York, USA (2011) and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2010), and has led the platform for alternative drawing research and practice “Drawing Tube” since 2016. Suzuki frequently collaborates with artists from other fields such as musicians and poets, and has carried out many large-scale public projects. Published books of his works include GENGA (2010) and SILVER MARKER―Drawing as Excavating (2020). Since 2021 he is an associate professor at Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Global Art Practice.

Text courtesy Each Modern.