YUKIHISA ISOBE

Yukihisa Isobe started his career as an artist, and shifted his interest to architecture and ecological planning. He is recently working as an environmental artist. He produced works that were composed of repeated emblem motifs in the early 1960s. These works consist of textures and three-dimensional structures like fresco paintings. The composition formed by irregularly repeated colors is very different from automatic repetition and multiplication that are typical in the pop art of the same generation; it is Isobe’s unique structure of repetition in abstract form. Isobe’s abstract expression incorporates symbolism of substance, repetition and mass productivity that are often seen in pop art, but reconstruct them beyond the boundary. With this, Isobe pioneered a new genre, a fusion of abstractionism and pop art. Isobe moved to New York in 1965. He produced Parachute Canopy Project (1969), in which parachutes were flown in the air to create various forms by wind directions, and installed Air Dome (1970) on the Earth Day. Since 1970 his interest gradually shifted to the environment and city planning. From 1990s when he restarted creating works to today, Isobe has been active as an environmental artist, producing land art works with themes of local communities and natural environment. He continues to create and exhibit works on the stage of Earth, literally.