122
UNITED NATIONS STAMP
JAPAN
Masakazu Takahata
Crossing 1999
acrylic on canvas 117.5 x 77 cm

Masakazu Takahata was born in 1962 and graduated from the Kanazawa Bijutsu Kougei College in 1984. He lives and works in Osaka, Japan. In the foreground, a human robot reads a newspaper, his head a millennial computer website. Behind him stretches a grey, anonymous major transport junction; a surreal mixture of motorway, railway, and airport terminal. Commuters pass through, their heads replaced by keyboard letters. One has ‘Esc’, another a single question mark. All individuality and identity are lost in a world where man is directed by routes, signs, and satellite communication. The only being free to travel independently is a bird. The artist comments: ‘I have expressed the feeling of uneasiness and pressure experienced daily by the average Japanese person, and criticise the technological society of Japan’.