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Tatsuya Tanaka’s ‘Miniature Calendar’ Makes Tiny Worlds Out of the Everyday

Tatsuya Tanaka’s photographs combines normal objects and tiny figures to craft surreal scenes. A phone becomes a fishing hole; a whistle becomes a slide. In each of these daily works, the artist uses scale and humor to make us re-examine the items we use each day. The blissful creations are part of an ongoing, daily project. An enormous catalog of these scenes goes back to April of 2011.

Tatsuya Tanaka’s photographs combines normal objects and tiny figures to craft surreal scenes. A phone becomes a fishing hole; a whistle becomes a slide. In each of these daily works, the artist uses scale and humor to make us re-examine the items we use each day. The blissful creations are part of an ongoing, daily project. An enormous catalog of these scenes goes back to April of 2011.

“Everyone must have had similar thoughts at least once,” the artist says. “Broccoli and parsley might sometimes look like a forest, or the tree leaves floating on the surface of the water might sometimes look like little boats … I wanted to take this way of thinking and express it through photographs, so I started to put together a ‘MINIATURE CALENDAR.’ These photographs primarily depict diorama-style figures surrounded by daily necessaries … It would be great if you could use it to add a little enjoyment to your everyday life.”

Early versions used a tile calendar to create these works, before moving into stranger and more vibrant territory. These works have been shown in several galleries and shows since.

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