Frantic Gallery returns to SCOPE Basel Art Show and this year we are honored to present the exhibition of “Extraordinary Drawings” by Taisuke Mohri and Macoto Murayama. Right after opening of Venice Biennale while for one week Basel becomes global center for contemporary art we would like to present two Japanese artists who work in the field of drawing and push their creations to the images that exceed the photography in its exactness, the drawings that overcome paintings in its richness of colors, the works on paper that create effect of depth, resolution and focus much stronger than any ordinary monitor. Presented works pushes the “linear representation” to the frontier where image takes away viewer’s certainty about the applied technique and media.

Mohri and Murayama approach the art of drawing from totally different, and even opposite sides. Murayama creates digital drawings, namely computer generated botanical illustrations, thus approaching botanical art rooted in 18th century with cut-edge electronic tools. He does vivisection of real flowers and sketches, but his eventual flower is created with the help of 3ds Max (3DCG) software for three-dimensional modeling. Mohri, on the other hand, while using the most traditional media (pencil and paper) and working within the common genre of portrait, pushes his images to the unprecedented hyper-realistic and multi-focused representation, which overcomes either abilities of the photo camera or ordinary human beings. In spite of strong differences of approaches of these artists, the ultimate aim of the exhibition is to create an intricate dialog between presented art works. Digital c-printed drawings by Murayama will affect Mohri’s color pencil works by infusing in them the air of futurism and hi-tech that is so vivid in New Media Art. At the same time, purely analogue, hand-made drawings will influence Murayama’s works with the strength of tradition, art history and the mood of Fine Arts.

Courtesy of Frantic Gallery