You’d made a lot of artwork as an illustrator,
but now you were being called upon to make work as an artist.
Right. I did have a kind of admiration for contemporary art when I was a high-schooler, but I also had this
sense that illustration was a step below fine art. It was curator/editor Taka Kawachi who
enlightened me to the nature of “art”. He’d also once tried to make it as an artist in New York, so he could be pretty harsh in
his assessments, but when he saw my debut show in New York, he said he really
liked it. The next show I did was a three-person group show with other
Japanese artists (“Remarkable Hands” 2005) that Taka curated at ATM Gallery. Since my last show had
been received so well, I tried to make this a continuation of what I’d done
there. But then Taka came to me and said, “This is cool and all, but it’s
nothing new. The thing with art is, you need to surprise people when they see
your work. I guess I’m a little disappointed.” My response was a simple “Oh”,
but truth be told, his words really stung. My first solo show in New York
(“Drunko”, 2006) was already locked in and coming up, so I hit the canvas,
saying, “Alright, time to switch things up and paint!”