Osaka Brand Center

Known for his trademark attire of samue working clothes matched with setta sandals, Gaku Azuma resides in the Minami district of Osaka, an area known for its nightlife, where he paints nothing but erotic women. “Tenyo,” a long-awaited book of Azuma’s works, has just been published, and it will soon be followed by an exhibition in Osaka. Azuma’s work features a gorgeous collection of boku-ga (black water-ink paintings) that illustrate the various alluring expressions of courtesans from the former Yukaku red light district. Azuma’s “Tenyo” interpretations are of women whose self is somewhere between that of sacred tennyo (angelic feminine forms) and sex sirens. Azuma presents the dichotomy that exists between the glowing beauty lying on the surface of such feminine forms, and the poisonous characters that often lurk beneath. With a sharp and uncompromising eye, Azuma, as if attempting to peel way individual layers of the inner self, gradually reveals the distorted being that can lie deep inside such feminine forms. It is a reflection of the eroticism Azuma sees that has caused others to refer to him as a “Ukiyo-e Artist of the Heisei Era.”
“Women are ethereal,” says Azuma. “I want to paint women and nothing else. I suppose it’s because I like beautiful things, including those that possess dark and complicating elements within them.” In Azuma’s paintings, the innocent beauty and wild desire of alluring women fills the artistic space with a sense of awkward balance; this awkwardness seems to validate Azuma’s creativity in itself. For Azuma, “women” personify “beauty,” and this in itself delivers meaning with regard to the way Azuma leads his own life.