Character Matrix

Character Matrix, a group exhibition themed around characters, is coming to BUG, which is run by Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. We will hold the exhibition in collaboration with artist Kazuki Takakura, a 2012 finalist at 1_WALL, the predecessor of the BUG Art Award. Takakura’s connections to us run deep: he has also served as a judge for the BUG Art Award, which was launched in 2023, and has had an input on the running of BUG and BUG Art Award. Through this exhibition, we will aim to create a space in which you can encounter things that are central to our message, such as “the dissonance this world needs” and “countless happenings.”

The exhibition will feature new works by six artists: Yume Aoyama, Sawako Kageyama, Tomoya Kuki, Kazuki Takakura, Romana Machin Tanimura and Takumi Hirayama. The works will center on original characters created by the artists. Visitors will be able to enjoy a range of works as they walk around, their point of view changing as they walk on slopes and raised walkway set up within the gallery. You can look forward to exploring a space in which the six artists’ works will be seamlessly displayed.

In Japan’s contemporary art scene, character art is dominated by anime-style bishōjo (cute girl) characters. But this exhibition will focus on a separate tendency: characters created outside anime and otaku culture.

To date, character art and design have been discussed alongside “narrative.” Since the 2000s, it has been theorized that our tendency to consume characters in conjunction with narrative is declining, but this is necessarily rooted in a viewpoint that privileges storytelling. Characters could hold the key to wholly different perspectives—ones that have been neglected in the postmodernist and otaku-oriented approaches to narrative and characters.

The aim of this exhibition is to pick up this neglected history and develop it. For example, characters in video games are there to be controlled, so they can be divorced from any narrative and still exist as the player’s yorishiro (an object inhabited by a deity). In other words, there is no need for them to assume a human form or take part in a human story. They are not unlike the characters created with merchandising in mind—stationery, toys etc—for films and series such as tokusatsu (special-effects-heavy) shows, which are based on set formulas (each day a monster shows up and is dispatched by the hero, who grows to a giant size). Looking further back, they also have something in common with the varieties of yōkai (ghosts and demons) and spirits.

The six artists participating in this exhibition are chiefly influenced by characters from games, toys, anime cartoons and tokusatsu shows from the 1990s onward.

Takakurakazuki’s comment

The exhibition will feature new works by six artists: Yume Aoyama, Sawako Kageyama, Tomoya Kuki, Kazuki Takakura, Romana Machin Tanimura and Takumi Hirayama. The works will center on original characters created by the artists. Visitors will be able to enjoy a range of works as they walk around, their point of view changing as they walk on slopes and raised walkway set up within the gallery. You can look forward to exploring a space in which the six artists’ works will be seamlessly displayed.

In Japan’s contemporary art scene, character art is dominated by anime-style bishōjo (cute girl) characters. But this exhibition will focus on a separate tendency: characters created outside anime and otaku culture.

To date, character art and design have been discussed alongside “narrative.” Since the 2000s, it has been theorized that our tendency to consume characters in conjunction with narrative is declining, but this is necessarily rooted in a viewpoint that privileges storytelling. Characters could hold the key to wholly different perspectives—ones that have been neglected in the postmodernist and otaku-oriented approaches to narrative and characters.

The aim of this exhibition is to pick up this neglected history and develop it. For example, characters in video games are there to be controlled, so they can be divorced from any narrative and still exist as the player’s yorishiro (an object inhabited by a deity). In other words, there is no need for them to assume a human form or take part in a human story. They are not unlike the characters created with merchandising in mind—stationery, toys etc—for films and series such as tokusatsu (special-effects-heavy) shows, which are based on set formulas (each day a monster shows up and is dispatched by the hero, who grows to a giant size). Looking further back, they also have something in common with the varieties of yōkai (ghosts and demons) and spirits.

The six artists participating in this exhibition are chiefly influenced by characters from games, toys, anime cartoons and tokusatsu shows from the 1990s onward.The world of “character variation”—which extends to yōkai, animism and polytheistic worldviews—has been left out of the strong mutual relationship forged between otaku culture and Japanese contemporary art since the 2000s. This exhibition will reconsider this world as a parallel ecosystem: a “character matrix” mandala.