MA Narrative Environments

People / Students / Haruyasu Yanagi

Haruyasu is a conceptual artist, sharing his philosophy through art. He started his career as a painter and calligrapher and later expanded to photography and poetry. He is interested in people and societal issues and is fascinated by story telling using narrativity.

As a conceptual artist, he has mainly created abstract paintings and objects which are elaborate in a minimal way. Each piece individually shows its exquisite beauty though, the quality will be enhanced and it will take on other meanings when some pieces are displayed together in a same space. It is significantly meaningful for him to demonstrate the effect of installation. For instance, an exhibit in the gallery KOMAGOME 1-14 cas, Tokyo, in 2015. In the venue, the audience felt a blessed ambience and were wrapped with serenity and warmth.

Projects are featured in his activities, too. In the Artist in Residence in the Bankart Yokohama in 2016, for example, an installation including photographs and an abstract painting was showcased. It represented the image of project “NEXUS”, which was aimed to inspire people to find connections with their own feelings, other people and the world. It may have led the audience to notice where they were in their life. Here is another sample of projects conducted through communication with its participants. It is called the a.i.=bottle, one of whose meanings is a bottle full of love. The participants are guided by him through the artistic process of writing love letters to themselves. They display their letters on a wall or put them in a clear bottle. Either way is respected and all involved sense light in the room. Installations based on fundamental and social issues are expected to connect art and people.

Moreover, management of art events such as exhibits and workshops and people skills are his great hallmarks. In 2016, he held two collaborative exhibitions in Tokyo. An artist based in Amsterdam was invited to one of the two expressing their insight about society through art work. Its title was coined to “INSIGHT OUT”. Through the events, he found himself enjoying managing, and now he knows his ability as a director can improve and attract more audience in the future. Also, he joined the Design Thinking class as an adviser in the university, Tokyo Institute of Technology, for months from 2016 to 2017. There was an opportunity for him to share his experience with participants and handle a project collaborated with DENSO, a gigantic automobile-related company.

Discipline: Conceptual Artist

Year of graduation: 2021

Website: Haruyasu Yanagi.