Keita Sagaki

The Japanese artist Keita Sagaki creates dense microcosms from tiny doodles, so-called "doodles", the sum of which makes up a larger whole. It is often a reinterpretation of world-famous works of art, such as Leonardo Da Vinci's “Last Supper” or woodcuts by Hokusai. Keita Sagaki, born in 1984, constructs new, complex worlds from hundreds of small drawings. His works illustrate the Aristotelian concept of the irreducible nature of things, where the whole consists of many elements, but it itself is usually larger than the sum of its parts.

When you encounter one of Sagaki's extraordinary works of art for the first time, you feel the need to get as close as possible to it. At first glance, they seem little more than monochrome representations of popular scenes or paintings, such as the Paris Eiffel Tower or Da Vinci's Last Supper. But his pictures are unusual. It is striking that his works have an unexpected detail density, a microscopic life, so to speak, in the facial features of depicted figures or in the details of landscape pictures. A central term in Keita Sagaki's work is composition. He begins a new work of art in which he draws directly on the surface without the help of sketches. A spontaneous flow of creativity composes the overall picture. With thin lines and delicate shades, the artist creates his characteristic, densely populated landscapes and sceneries and thus fills a world with hundreds, often thousands, of small, interwoven human and animal figures with life. The artist has often been asked whether he knows the number of figures he has drawn to complete a work. Keita Sagaki always denies this. How could he count it, especially in his larger works, which can be two by four meters in size. which he had drawn up to the completion of a work. Keita Sagaki always denies this. How could he count it, especially in his larger works, which can be two by four meters in size. which he had drawn up to the completion of a work. Keita Sagaki always denies this. How could he count it, especially in his larger works, which can be two by four meters in size.
Sagaki's works are mainly influenced by complex Buddhist mandalas, comics and graffiti art. Not surprisingly, the school books and exercise books from his school days were covered with countless doodles. However, there is another, deeper dimension of the art of Keita Sagaki. Its aesthetics touches on mereology, a branch of theoretical philosophy that deals with the relationship between the part and the whole, as a structural foundation of the physical world. A basic idea of ​​this scientific pursuit was to find out whether things could be explained by their microscopic properties. Keita Sagaki takes this up in his art and reminds us that every object is composed of its individual parts.