Studio Visit: Hiroki Tsukuda’s Moody Drawings of a Neo-Futuristic World

Hiroki Tsukuda’s moody and graphical landscapes incorporate elements of traditional Japanese arts and pop culture imagery. The Japanese artist has been residing in Germany for the past few months while his current exhibition, “Colla Max”, shows at Warhus Rittershaus Gallery in the city of Cologne. We recently met with him at his temporary open studio space at Autocenter in Berlin, Germany. The project is part of an international residence program curated by Tokyo based art gallery, Nanzuka Underground. Despite the rare opportunity to travel abroad, Tsukada says that it has little effect on his creative thinking. His drawings exhibit a rather neo-futuristic world view, a futuristic re-imagining of the visual and functionality of rapidly growing cities like Tokyo, where he lives. But unlike other neo-futurism artists, Tsukada teeters visually between old and new. “I don’t know whether I am creating an imaginary world from the landscapes that I have been observing on an unconscious level, or whether the world in my imagination just suddenly appears before my eyes,” he says. The placement of objects and symbols is an important theme in his work. Random images that he sources from online, comics and animation, are mixed inconsistently with calligraphy inspired writing “with no meaning” throughout the composition. He is constantly trying to find a balance between the image’s restlessness and evoke a mysterious intrigue. “I’m trying to express, as memories, those fragmented landscapes that are engraved within me.”