HIDEAKI YAMANOBE

Hideaki Yamanobe is a wanderer between worlds. Born in Tokyo in 1964 he later spent time in Basel, Switzerland before moving on to Cologne, Germany and, again, Tokyo – the two cities he finally chose to live and work in.

Crossing borders and cultures has been a recurring theme for Yamanobe in many ways and took root in his works of art. Having first gone through a process of full immersion into modern art of the Western Hemisphere he has finally found a subtle balance that now also melds in philosophical and artistic traditions of the Far East.

Moreover, crossing borders includes Yamanobe’s interest in other media and art forms – foremost his fascination with contemporary music that manifests in a longstanding cooperation with German composer Helmut Lachenmann. Yamanobe created set-designs for performances of Lachenmann’s operas at Salzburger Festspiele, Tokyo’s Suntori Hall and other venues.

His paintings impress with their signature language: The use of a distinct color space restricted mainly to a palette of black, white, brick red and crimson; the use of various semi-transparent layers of color blending into each other – creating an atmosphere of diffuse timelessness and placelessness; the reference to nature and its intangible elements like air and light expressing the underlying mood of these delicate paintings.

In fact Yamanobes works are not about depicting specific subject matter nor are they prescribing a certain reality of concept. They are rather autonomous creations that exist in their own right evoking  sensual perceptions and sublte emotion that are in turn a calm resonation of the artworks’ sensitivity.