 | Some viewers may be surprised by the intensity of these artists' responses to the world we live in, a passionate involvement that might seem to contradict their isolation and the solitary nature of their work. To exist beyond the mainstream and even on the fringes of ordinary society is not, as these works attest, to inhabit another planet. The large drawings that Hiroyuki Doi—who was born in Nagoya in 1946 and now lives in Tokyo—makes with a Pilot Pen, composed entirely of circles of varying size and thickness, are, like Rorschach inkblots, infinitely interpretable images in which we can see the cosmic and the cellular, entire galaxies, and ragged splotches of lichen. They are, Doi claims, a way of emphasizing "human work using human hands," a personal protest against the fact that "we are living in the age of computerized society." |  |
Hiroyuki Doi, Untitled, 2003. Image courtesy the artist, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, and American Folk Art Museum, New York. |
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