Cut-Paste: Meguru Yamaguchi's "typesetting" painting

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Dynamic paintings by Brooklyn artist Meguru Yamaguchi look like someone blew up a dozen cans of different colors at the same time, but by some bizarre coincidence, the splashes have formed into skillful and quite recognizable portraits.

To achieve this effect, Yamaguchi uses a very peculiar technique, combining painting and mosaics. First, the artist prepares acrylic paint by mixing a large amount of paint on a flat surface covered with polyethylene. Acrylic hardens in a dense elastic layer. Already from this ready-made "rug" the artist cuts pieces of the desired colors, shapes and sizes, which he fixes on the basis of the future picture. The artist himself calls this technique "cut and paste."

Yamaguchi grew up in the Shibuya area, the epicenter of Tokyo's street culture. Since both of his parents were fashion designers, as a child, the boy got acquainted with pop art and the works of artists such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Warhol. At fifteen, Yamaguchi was completely fascinated by Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Until now, in his paintings, the floral motifs of the Dutch painter and a similar manner of dealing with color spots are easily read. But most of all, according to the artist, Gerhard Richter influenced him. It was his work that initially inspired Yamaguchi to paint.

However, at a certain point, the artist felt that in traditional oil painting he lacked a more rigid structure, a way to combine colors without allowing them to mix. So began his experiments with water-dispersed paints, in particular acrylic paints. “It's like putting together a puzzle,” explains Yamaguchi. - "I can add something, and remove something."

In his free time from painting, Yamaguchi performs small orders as a designer, for example, makes covers for music discs or paints walls. The artist appreciates such projects for the opportunity to change the scale and get fresh impressions: “I want to try to paint something really big, for example, a whole building. I'm currently working on a mural in the Bronx, but it's still a rectangular plane. It would be great to try something bigger and in a different format to surprise the people."

Yamoguchi isn't the only artist experimenting with acrylics' volumizing properties after drying. American Justin Geffrey, apparently preferring Van Gogh rather than Warhol, works in a similar technique.