16 MEI

BIOGRAPHY

In 2017, 16Mei began painting self-taught works using transparent watercolor. In 2021, He held their first solo exhibition at Art Gallery Shirokane 6c. Since 2022, he have been painting with acrylics on canvas and exhibiting their work in international art fairs and group exhibitions.

His paintings depict a mysterious but slightly eerie world. He incorporates characters in the form of plants and girls into the stories that exist within the artist. The swirling patterns in the characteristic canvas matiere represent things that cannot be resisted, such as waves, wind, and the flow of time.

The inspiration for 16Mei's paintings comes from three fears they had in his own childhood. The first was all plants, including trees and flowers, which they could not distinguish from humans and which were like ghosts. The second was lucid dreaming, like a cage in which you are permanently trapped, conscious but unable to wake up. The third was the surface of the water where they had the sensation that something was coming up from the bottom and the patterns looked strange.

16Mei still has a hard time with these things, but he also find them more beautiful. Hi goal is to depict this beauty and fear in a comfortable way, and their theme is to overcome themselves and explore new beauty.

The reason for the appearance of characters in the form of girls rather than real people in the paintings has its background in the artist's childhood, when he suffered from phobias and were saved by manga and anime. Girls, like the characters in the stories, are sometimes angels, sometimes mermaids, and have no special fixed gender or race. 16Mei paints them as symbols of seeming innocence and delicacy, but with an inner strength that is not defeated by fear.

“My painting now is a ritual for me to face my own inner self, and I hope it will be the same for those who see my work.”

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