Naoki Fuku

Tokio, Japan

Tokyo, Japan Naoki Fuku is a Japanese artist born in Tokyo. He moved to London, where he began to focus on his artistic career. He currently lives and works in Germany and Switzerland. His work consists of works of art, paintings and installations, and often paints a mixed picture of social, political and cultural issues in a systematic and poetic way, inviting the viewer to enter a space of speculation. The media coverage of world affairs is one of the main sources of inspiration, while a sense of modernity is hidden in most of his work. His works are placed in the canon of Western culture, trying to make visible what can be ignored in modern life today. The artist’s works have been exhibited in galleries, museums and alternative venues in Japan, the United States, Switzerland, Germany, England, France, Austria, Brazil, the Netherlands, Spain and Russia. Naoki Fuku’s oeuvre is a critical approach to the debate over human existence. It questions the social and political position of the individual in the original cultural environment. It’s all about existence and how to deal with it or avoid it. His two new series of works, Babel in my mind and the study of the human mind, play with the concept of identity. On the one hand, they make it difficult, if not completely impossible, to identify, and on the other hand, they manage to give a striking picture of a complex inner world. People’s identities can be seen as a multitude of layers. However, knowing all the layers doesn’t necessarily mean we really grasp the identity behind them. The artist plays with these layers and places them on top of each other, constantly hiding them. The identity of the human being can be explained as a multitude of layers, but also as a conglomerate of characteristics. Hiding these characteristics means taking our eyes off and showing another existence. The works seem to be variations of one and the same person, showing a multitude of personalities and traits. Thus, this kind helps the viewer to see the traits of the person behind them. This is the culmination of a game about how much the artist has changed what the viewer is watching. The artist plays with the viewer’s perceptions and expectations while showing remarkable identities. Fuku creates new identities and shows the inner life of the resulting characters while playing with the quasi-layers around him to portray the inner horrors and cramps in a very expressionist way.