Naofumi Maruyama (Niigata, Japan 1964) is inspired by German romanticism, with the help from his long sojourns in Berlin. He links his aesthetic value to the tradition of Japanese art, painting ink figures surrounded by bright, chromatic expanses. His work thus remains fresh and enlivening.
Maruyama’s technique gives his work a fluid appearance. This mean of expression conveys the artist’s intention of “floating” beyond the frontier between the abstract and the figurative.
Naofumi Maruyama creates dreamy and mysterious situations, which are attracted to the formal elements of pop art and mangas.
His paintings are part of the following collections: Kawaguchi Contemporary Art Museum, Saitama; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka; The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tochigi; The Japan Foundation, Tokyo; and Iwaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Ibaragi.
Francisco Sierra (Santiago Chile, 1977) also refers to two traditions: hyperrealism and
surrealism. These two currents are hard, still amusing to join; and it is this apparent
contradiction that is symptomatic of a liberty taken regarding art history.
Self-taught, Francisco Sierra openly exhibits this partnership, creating the ambiguity true
to masterpieces.
Sierra invents fantastic worlds reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch or Francisco de Goya,
where aesthetic appeal, and emotional power, unsettles and stirs.
Francisco Sierra has been awarded three times this year with the Swiss Art Awards,
the Kiefer Hablitzel Prize and the Rotary Prize.
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