Hiroki Otsuka
A professional comic book illustrator since 1994, Brooklyn based Japanese artist/illustrator Hiroki Otsuka honed his craft drafting and inking comic book cells for a variety of projects, and illustrated for a number of major Japanese publications through 2004. In 2005, Hiroki Otsuka's focus shifted from graphic to fine arts, working predominantly with traditional sumi ink used in Japanese calligraphy. Hiroki Otsuka's debut solo show at Brooklyn's Stay Gold Gallery in 2005 prompted The New Yorker to write that his works "push the populist youth quotient through the roof." Since then, his work has appeared in galleries throughout the United States and Japan, and has been featured in international art fairs in New York, Tokyo and Basel, Switzerland. He's been exhibited at major art institutions such as The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (Nothing Moments, 2007) and in academic settings such as Pittsburgh University Art Gallery (Making Faces: Depiction of Women in Japan from Edo to Today, 2009). In 2007, Hiroki Otsuka was featured in Japan Society’s centennial exhibition Making a Home, curated by Eric C. Shiner, that highlighted 33 Japanese contemporary artists living and working in New York. Berlin's Kunstraum Richard Sorge held a major exhibition of Hiroki Otsuka's paintings and murals in 2009 entitled Everything to More. Most recently, Hiroki Otsuka provided the integrated illustrations for choreographer Jeremy Wade's critically acclaimed multimedia dance there is no end to more, a Japan Society commission which had its world premiere in New York in December 2009. From March 12-June 13, 2010, Hiroki Otsuka serves as Japan Society's first-ever manga artist-in-residence during the exhibition Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection.