The Divine Gas, 2006 - Chiho Aoshima

Influenced by anime and manga cartoons, Chiho Aoshima stands apart from her peers through her exploration of the dark currents lying beneath Japanese pop imagery. She presents nature at odds with man, girls at odds with traditional gender roles, and visions of renewal after the apocalypse. She says of her practice: "My work feels like strands of my thoughts that have flown around the universe before coming back to materialize."

Not formally trained in art, Aoshima graduated from the Department of Economics at Hosei University before going to work for the artist Takashi Murakami, who eventually made her a member of his Kaikai Kiki collective. From there, Aoshima went on to create colorful large-scale dreamscapes on paper, canvas, plexiglass, and aluminum, as well as sculptures and animations. Employing traditional design practices and computer technology to create her flat compositions, Aoshima was included in the Walker Art Center exhibition Superflat (2001), organized by her mentor, Murakami. In 2003, Aoshima made her first foray into fashion, collaborating with legendary Japanese designer Issey Miyake on his Spring/Summer Collection. The following year, she was invited to participate in the 54th Carnegie International at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, where she unveiled her largest wallpaper piece to date, measuring 106 feet in length by 15 feet in height.

Since then, she has completed various public art installations, including a series of murals in the Union Square subway station in New York City and a fantasy cityscape running the length of London's Gloucester Road Tube station. Most recently she has collaborated with New Zealand-born Bruce Ferguson on a lengthy panoramic animation that hangs in the lobby of the Museum of the Moving Images' new building in New York City.Read Less