sagaki keita: comic fine art drawings

‘slave’ by sagaki,

the works of japanese artist keita sagaki are highly detailed drawings portraying a larger figure or image comprised of hundreds and thousands of smaller sketches. his portfolio of painstakingly detailed, multi-layered pieces are approached in this way as the artist was deeply affected by mandara, a form of religious painting in esoteric buddhism, to which he was exposed at a very young age. his father took him to witness the making of this psychological and meditative artistic process at the age of ten. his exposure to mandara was around the same time that the other prominent feature of sagaki’s work, comic-like figures, was beginning to enter his artistic repertoire. now, sagaki begins his especially image-dense illustrations in ink from one corner of the canvas until the entirety of the work-surface has been covered in his whimsical doodles, ultimately forming a fine-art work when viewed from a distance.

‘all things are composed of whole and part. for instance, the human body is built from 60 trillion cells. moreover, every matter is formed by an atom or a molecule. when all people live in this world, everybody belong to some organization such as a family, school, company and nation, even if we are unconsciousness. let’s broaden your horizons. your country is part of nations all over the world. and, the solar system including our planet is a part of the galaxy. however, the concept of ‘whole and part’ is not fixed. it’s in flux if we interpret from a different viewpoint, the wholeness which we defined is converted into the partialness. domain in the relations of both, it never ends. the concept of my creation is the relations of borderless ‘whole and part’. as i draw a picture in this concept, i want to express conflict and undulation from relations of ‘whole and part’, cannot be measured in addition and subtraction (the whole in the grand total of the part. and the part by the whole division)‘ -keita sagaki

slave detail whereby hundreds of comic-like skulls are drawn to form the figures