Born in 1974 in Shizuoka, JP, Mochizuka is a painter and artist who also likes music and nature. He paints from memory and imagination. A starting point or image is selected and abstracted for each new body of work. Moving away from traditional subject matters such as flowers, forests and foliage, and towards integrating them in an abstract manner, he started to use shaped canvases around 2016.

His recent series of oil paintings with dark backgrounds and bursts of light colors integrates ancient lacquer techniques using multiple layers of paint to obtain deep, rich and smooth surfaces. As he re-discovers and discloses the underlying color layers by using his finger tip, the abstraction of floral motifs bursts from the canvas. Surrounded by the varnished surface, the imaginary nature from another world in psychedelic colors comes to mind and invites us into other vibrant spaces. The act of manually re-discovering the unconsciously painted areas adds to the fascination and tantalizing qualities of these daunting works.

The first dark surface paintings were exhibited at Misako & Rosen in Tokyo and at Paris Internationale in 2023 and most recently at miart, Milano.

He will participate in ENcounter 2024, Bremen-Fujieda Projekt Teil II this summer, his second residency in Bremen, DE.

Anne Mosseri-Marlio