GSIX

INTO THE DEEP NATURE Entrance Artwork
『Hyperman Pangu』

A statue of Hyperman, guardian of the universe and nature, welcomes you at the entrance of GINZA SIX, alongside key visuals by Kazuki Takakura, today’s hottest digital artist.

― Installation Overview ―

The entrance features a new work by Kazuki Takakura, creator of unique mandala characters inspired by icons of deities ancient and modern drawn from both Eastern and Western traditions, including Buddhism and Shinto. This work fuses natural elements and animistic totems with a special-effect worldview and transforms elements of digital culture like video games, emoji, and computers into art.
It presents images with motifs of earth, water, fire, wind, and sky, the five elements common in Eastern views of nature, endlessly flowing from the numerous displays that make up the stature of Hyperman, guardian of the universe and nature. The expansive digital pop background features animal characters depicting the twelve signs of the Eastern zodiac.

【Title】Hyperman Pangu
【Artist】 Kazuki Takakura
【Installation location】 1F Entrance (4-chome side facing Chuo-dori)
【Installation period】 Friday, April 4 – Tuesday, May 6 (holiday), 2025
【Dimensions】 230 cm (D) × 300 cm (W) × 370 cm (H)

Entrance on the side of Kojunsha-dori
Entrance on B2F
B2F Underground Passage
B2F Underground Passage
B2F Underground Passage
B2F Underground Passage
B2F Underground Passage

― Artist’s Message
(Thoughts about the Work) ―

Hyperman is a character representing the five natural elements of Esoteric Buddhism: earth, water, fire, wind, and sky. Eastern philosophy sees nature as a great network, a thing of harmony, and the spiritual world for us to explore.
The twelve characters of the Eastern zodiac, newly created alongside Hyperman, symbolize orientations and seasons in the theory of Yin-Yang and the five elements. They also symbolize an era when time and space were not separated. With great respect for the works of Kenji Yanobe, who brought SHIP’S CAT to GINZA SIX to symbolize celestial and cosmic energies, I intended this work to present a mandala space symbolic of nature and the earth.

Kazuki Takakura

Born in 1987, the artist Kazuki Takakura completed a Master’s Degree at Tokyo Zokei University. He creates works with themes such as contemporary art redefined through Buddhism and other Eastern ideas, the pursuit of new value for digital data, and the aesthetics of character variations using modes of digital expression like video games, pixel art, virtual reality, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and AI. His major exhibitions have included Mechareal, a solo exhibition at the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art; Character Matrix, a project/exhibit at BUG; solo exhibitions at the Ashikaga Municipal Art Museum, SusHi Tech Square, the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC), and in Taipei; and exhibitions in New York and Mexico.

― Representative Works ―

Hyper Shrine (Oni/Snake) (2024)
About this work

This work was exhibited simultaneously at SusHi Tech Square and the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC), with Hyper Shrine (Oni) shown at SusHi Tech Square and Hyper Shrine (Snake) at ICC. These are virtual shrines dedicated to digital extensions. The two shrines of this work were linked online to depict viewers of Hyper Shrine (Oni) as demons defiling the virtual space and those of Hyper Shrine (Snake) as snakes collecting and offering songs. The songs offered by the snakes can be heard by demons attending the shrine in the virtual space.

Kyarasen Mandala (2024)
About this work

This work closely analyzes and reinterprets the Taizokai-mandala in Shingon Esoteric Buddhism to depict the womb realm as a game character choice screen or the internal structure of a personal computer. The numberless Buddhas include some that Takakura created by himself and others created with the help of AI.

Visible, Apparent, Nonexistent (2023)
About this work

In this work, viewers operate a PC to create senryu poetry by choosing keywords consisting of five, seven, and five syllables. AI translates the viewers’ poems into English, interprets them, and creates yokai (monster) characters learned from Takakura’s style. The yokai characters thus created are displayed on screen and can be purchased as NFTs.