Yutaka Inagawa

Who is Yutaka Inagawa?

Yutaka Inagawa is a Japanese artist trained in painting, line drawing and photography who specialises in exploiting digital photomontage.

Born in Tokyo, Japan, he grew up in the Ikebukuro district. In 1997 he graduated first in his class at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, then went on to gain a master's degree in fine art in 2004 from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, England. Since then he has lived and worked in London.

His art skilfully blends the delicate and the grotesque, juxtaposing photographic fragments, line art and painting to produce complex abstract works. His work is inspired by the uneasy lack of harmony between tradition and modernity in the fast-paced, constantly changing urban world. He sees parallels between his work and the way in which his home city, Tokyo, has absorbed western conventions into Japanese culture without any proper synthesis or reconciliation. He builds his organic-looking images from bizarre collections of carefully cut out photographic elements - including machinery, fish, road signs, leaves, weapons, furniture - the everyday alongside the unusual - the threatening with the benign - but skilfully intertwined so that the original forms are almost indiscernible.