Kazuhiko Tanaka

Tanaka graduated from School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts,Tokyo, Japan earned a degree in Department of Architecture.  He is a licensed architect and Member of Tokyo Society of Architects
and Building Engineers.

Tanaka founded his own architectural design studio, Zakurosha Ltd. and has designed many commercial and residential buildings in Japan. He has also been active in his pursuit of creating sculptures and painting. In his recent creations, he has introduced his design of miniature sculptures of figurines that portray everyday lives of people.

The project titled “Lifescapes” had been exhibited in both Tokyo, at Gallery Kabutoya in Ginza (in Feb. 2012) and Boston, at Keiko Gallery (in 2007 – 2009, 2011).  His works are collected by many private and
corporate collectors including Daiichi Life Insurance, and Technology Systems Inc., Tokyo, Japan.

Artist Statement: About my art

Reflecting upon my past as one’s life history, I started as a boy who loved to create and always to daydream. Then there were the years of hard work, painting day after day, and becoming a moderately
successful architect. Now in my mature years, it is time for me to paint and create.

I see a space where we all are living in beauty and poetry, though unaware of being one. As if withstanding the hardship of a stormy blizzard, old architecture appears as a well lived old gentleman
or an hundred years old enormous tree.  Modern architecture presents youthfulness of a young man.  I am intrigued in a space where young or old, man or woman, all and each, even unaware, merge to become beautiful and poetic.

I am always driven to capture the scenes I see today, beauty and poetry that live in a landscape where a man stands in the moment, as if to capture all on a page of a diary. This is my challenge.

Surprisingly, I am an architect who does not like large architectural structures. I like the feeling of being able to create an object that I can hold in my palm … that fits in my palm. Not in a museum nor a castle, but an ordinary space of everyday, a place on a desk, inside a jacket pocket where I can gently leave my art.  I want to put a life inside. And if you agree, not so much “displaying it and appreciating it” but I hope “you can play with it.”