Hello, Here I Am

Everything is black and white. Takamatsu’s hand-painted monochrome images are created using a mixture of watercolor and opaque white pigments in gouache. “White and black metaphorically express the ambiguity of positive and negative, good and evil, race and religion,” the artist writes. After meticulously painting multiple gouache layers, Takamatsu colors each individual pixel of the object a different shade of grey, resulting in an astonishing sense of depth and surrealism. “His hologram-like, female characters look digitized,” writes Hi-Fructose, “though they’re executed entirely by hand.” This extreme attention to detail allows the viewer to experience Takamatsu’s fantastical depictions of Japanese women in an immersive presentation.