Takahiro Hirabayashi is trained in traditional Japanese painting, but in his mixed-media work, he applies these age-old techniques to contemporary portraits with a sci-fi element. Hirabayashi’s characters seem to inhabit a world in decline. In many of his paintings, they appear with blood-like stains running from their mouths, and their skin often looks cracked to expose ripe, pink flesh. They seem to be disintegrating before our eyes, and the traces of their carnivorous feasts left on the front of their shirts hint at their desperation to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
With his signature “Ohlala” character, 
Iran-born painter 
In