Kazuhiko Nakamura
Automaton
The artist I chose, Kazuhiko Nakamura was born in Hyogo, Japan in 1961. He was greatly influenced by surrealism and cyberpunk styles of art. His style of art has dark look to it, non of which really emulate life. He makes live objects seam dead and mechanical. In making the lifelike images turn into machines the viewer no longer looks at the piece as something alive. Once the mechanical aspect transforms the image the viewer is only seeing machines, not live objects. I found this very interesting because of how simply he can transition the mechanical and humanistic aspects of his pieces. He has had exhibitions in Zurich and other places around the world, and has also has had his work used for book and Music CD covers. I found this interesting because of the upcoming project we have to do. The object is to combine dissimilar things and my immediate thought was to combine humans and machines.
Rhinoceros 1515
On the site I looked at about Nakamura there was a quote from an artist reviewer that said, "Nakamusa's art is a surreal hybrid of man and machine, a hard marriage of man and machine, a hard marriage of metal and flesh." His art does represent the hybrid of man and machine and what it reminded me of is how viewer's feel when looking at something mechanical as opposed to something that's actually alive. The mechanical element of his pieces give everything a dark ominous mood to them. He uses very dark hues with many different shades of black and brown to simplify the images. The lack of color adds to the "dead" feeling of these images. They all seem to look constrained by the gears and wires that make each figure up. In Rhinoceros 1525 the mechanical Rhino looks like its being held up and constrained by all of the wires. In Automaton the human skull is shown as a layer of the mechanical parts that make up the face. Nothing seems alive and all of the human like features are only shown in crude bits and pieces. The only thing that makes it alright to look at is because technically we look at all of the subjects as machines.
Metamorphosis
I like these pieces for what they represent, and how the artist makes the viewer feel when looking at them. In my opinion I would try to make each piece look more alive and less mechanical. Nakamura does an incredible job combining man and machine but I don't like how dead every image seems. Metamorphosis has the most soft feel to it but the lack of color and lack of "humanness" to it makes it seem very dead. I would add more color and humanistic features to this work if it were up to me. I do think that his work goes to show that once something is mechanical it is viewed at as dead but I don't necessarily agree with that idea. Anything that is mechanical has been constructed from some basic idea that a person has had. A machine is an extension of it's makers idea so in a way it's a part of the person who made it. These idea's live on through the machines that we make as humans so in a way machines should be considered living examples the minds of it's maker. Many machines have the same basic functions that humans do; they have memory, they can die(run out of battery), they can calculate and keep track of time...in a way we could classify as them being somewhat alive. That's why I would try to add a more lifelike feel to these pieces.
www.mechanicalmirage.com
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