Artist Spotlight: Akane Koide
In 2006, Tokyo born Akane Koide presented a booth at GEISAI, and was scouted by Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki artist collective at the young age of 15. The themes of her works speak of the trials and tribulations of junior and high-school students, expressed firsthand by junior-high school student Koide.
She has what I consider the “Murakami visual aesthetic”, as the majority of the artists in Murakami’s KaiKai Kiki collective all have a very similar “drawn-by-a-child-with-crayons” appeal (which is a drastic juxtaposition to Murakami’s mechanical like percision in his own works). However, do not confuse my use of the term “visual aesthetic” with Murakami’s superflat movement, which Koide’s work is undoubtedly apart of. Superflat (to me, at least) is more of a term for the movement or genre that Koide’s work is a part of; and to which predominantly all Japanese flattened anime-esque artworks are apart of. Gallery after the jump.
