【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)
― 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.
― Representative Works ―
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.
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.