Masaru Shichinohe (b. 1959)

The realistic perspective technique used by Japanese artist Masaru Schichinohe has secured his primacy within the Japanese painting. His work A Red Star and a Brass Ball (Lot 112) emphasises a rigorous architectural design, but is softened with surrealism that shades the rational structure of its edifice. The figure's real sense of volume in a sharply contrasting three-dimensional spaced picture format recalls the Renaissance period, even as it upholds the precision of this art style that depicts nature and science. Clad in a red velvet dress, the girl casts her naive and baffled eyes in a fixed gaze at a point beyond the frame. Her hand clasps a golden ball, the infinite trajectory of whose descent hints at the viewer's incapacity to visualise the mystical space encompassed within the steel bin. The illustrative narrative-style layout cues the viewer to probe the air that is piqued with curiosity lurking within the vignette, while the starkly bright- dim contrast of light and shadow imparts a nostalgic retro ambience to this picture, and so presents a fantasy atmosphere reminiscent of a scene staged in a theatre. Under the influence of a markedly Western style, Masaru Schichinohe borrows from non-traditional Japanese methods to artfully usher the viewer into a tableau replete with fantasy.