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Music

Takagi Masakatsu Moves Us With His Moving Paintings

One of Japan’s leading visual artists, Takagi Masakatsu, makes his paintings move with his music.

Musician and visual artist, Takagi Masakatsu, surpasses all boundaries when it comes to romanticizing the natural environment. Finding absolute beauty even in the humdrum of his Walden-esque hideaway in Kyoto, Japan, he uses inspiration from his natural environment to paint the sounds of his music. Although Masakatsu's ambient experimental compositions are nothing new, we're more interested in the way his visuals and sounds mimic a waltz in whimsical syncopation.

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Take his ever popular Light Pools, for example. Swimming has never looked so soft to the sight, nor sounded so sweet to the ear. The iridescent ripples of the water glimmer in similar seduction as the works of Gustav Klimt, whilst still instilling a keen contemporary touch.

Private Drawing equally demonstrates how Masakatsu’s work strikes the imagination through sight and sound. His line drawings surface in tangled colors, playfully complementing his sensationalized string orchestration.

Chosen in 2006 as one of RES magazine's RES 10, an annual roster of up-and-coming artists that prove a profound influence in the multimedia arts, Masakatsu has collaborated and toured with singer/songwriter David Sylvian of the 1970s Brit New Wave band Japan. Just recently completing his first solo tour in Seoul, Ymene, the highly-acclaimed artist once again mesmerized audiences with his grandiose piano composition performed against the visual backdrop of his high-resolution reveries, giving reason to the meaning of ymene which translates to 'the source of dreams.'

Ymene