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Contemporary Art — Masaki Hirokawa: Uriel, Archetypus and Reclining Buddha

Contemporary Art

Contemporary Art

Toward the love at the root of consciousness.

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Recipient of seventeen international art awards, I have exhibited across Europe, Asia, and the Americas and been featured in art books and international magazines. Against the backdrop of a distinctly Japanese sense of prayer, my work takes as its subject collective psychology, the structure of the cognitive world, and fundamental consciousness. This page brings together the works and their themes, how they are made, and a record of exhibitions.

A work of art becomes a bridge.

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Four Themes

A work is not an answer. — A vessel for keeping what cannot be untangled, still tangled.

MASAKI HIROKAWA
Ⅱ

Masterpieces

Presented in the order I hold them most dear, as in my Artwork Documentation. The words beside each work were written for that work.

Nº 01 — 2020

Archetypus

元型

Jul 2020 · Photo collage · Digital media · 123 × 99 cm

This artwork, titled "Archetypus," explores the theme of "A Return to the Archetypal and Repetition," featuring repeated reproductions of a woman wearing a bird mask — an expression of humanity's fierce desires.

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Nº 02 — 2020

Uriel

静謐な世界

May 2020 · Photo collage · Digital media · 114 × 79 cm

This artwork was created as a prayer for a tranquil and peaceful world for all people. Through this piece, one can feel emotions of sorrow, prayer, compassion, and ultimately, hope.

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Nº 03 — 2020

Reclining Buddha

涅槃像

Oct 2020 · Photo collage · Digital media · 125 × 100 cm

I imagine my birthplace to be so beautiful that I might mistake it for the cosmic ocean—the place where I shall ultimately go, where I shall return. I can no longer hear that song, nor can I remember that beloved, nostalgic voice. Someday, I will deliver this soul to Nirvana, together with the billowing midnight smoke rising high into the sky.

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Nº 04 — 2020

Forgotten Sky

忘却の眺め

Aug 2020 · Photo collage · Digital media · 62 × 62 cm

In an age when so much of the face lies hidden, children learn to read the feelings beneath it, guided by the faintest of cues. The light in another's eyes, the quiet presence that radiates from the whole of their being — these become the threads by which they earnestly try to reach one another. This work was made as a prayer: that one day, beneath a clear blue sky, we might once again see the radiant smiles of children — even as we know that such a sky may now linger only in the far reaches of memory.

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Nº 05 — 2020

The World in a Birdcage

啓示

Aug 2020 · Photo collage · Digital media · 89 × 124 cm

The white dove depicted in this work represents a revelation from a higher-dimensional being. Every person born on this earth carries an important role.

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Nº 06 — 2020

A Regenerated World

新世界

May 2020 · Photo collage · Digital media · 71 × 116 cm

This artwork was created with hope for the new era to come. Anxiety and bewilderment toward the new era, anticipation, and repose. All of these feelings are embedded in the design of this flat plane.

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Ⅲ

All Works

All 72 works, in the same order as the masterpieces. Choose a work to see its year and size, the words behind it, and its record of awards, exhibitions and publications.

All artworks are created entirely by hand, without the use of AI.

Ⅳ

How the Works Are Made

Works reel (no sound)

My works are made through photo collage and photo retouching. I process each source image one at a time and assemble them into a collage, then merge everything into a single image and work over it again with the brush from the very beginning.

Archetypus, one of my central works, is slightly larger than A0. It holds more than 200 layers, and the file came to some 20GB in total. Almost all of the work was done by brush, and every mask was given its own restorations and damages.

Every work is made by my own hand, without the use of AI. I believe that by layering brushwork in pursuit of the boundary between beauty and ugliness, one arrives at a manifestation of the psyche that goes beyond aesthetic appreciation.

I taught myself web design in 1997, and after years in core systems, games and app development, I returned in earnest to graphic art in 2019. In late autumn that year, under the night sky above Kichijōji Station in Tokyo, I saw a mysterious ring of light. It became the turning point that set me making symbolic, dreamlike works in a single sustained burst.

I hold deep respect for Leonor Fini, a painter who kept to a free and sovereign mode of expression, and for Hans Bellmer, who came from engineering yet created works both structural and poetic. When I was seventeen, someone taught me that art is not something lofty or reserved for the few, but a natural language originally open to everyone.

Ⅴ

Exhibitions on Film

Views of exhibitions in Barcelona and Milan (no sound).

A Beautiful HorizonMEAM, Barcelona · 2026
KINTSUGIM.A.D.S. ART GALLERY, Milan · 2025
KINTSUGIM.A.D.S. ART GALLERY, Milan · 2025
TRACES OF DREAMSM.A.D.S. ART GALLERY, Milan · 2025
Ⅵ

Selected Recognition

A selection of recent highlights. The full record of awards, exhibitions and publications is on the Profile section of the home page.

See all awards, exhibitions and publications

Each stands isolated within its cell, yet bound into one procession by inescapable threads of fate. — Poetry and mathematics are saying the same thing.

MASAKI HIROKAWA
Ⅶ

Philosophy — Causal Horizon

I set down the thinking behind my works in the form of a paper. In Causal Horizon — Funeral Procession, the final edition of my series on causal sets as a funeral procession, I treat time not as a flow but as a partial order of causation, and make calculable, in the language of order theory, the proposition that we are neither born nor perishing — that inside the event horizon of a black hole, every one of us forms a single funeral procession.

It overlays the idea from physics that an inner world is uniquely reconstructed from data on its boundary with the Yogācāra thought that the phenomenal world unfolds from the ālaya-vijñāna, and connects them with the mandala and with nirvana. The full text is available as a PDF in English and Japanese.

Read the paper

English (PDF) Japanese (PDF)
Ⅷ

Acquire a Work · Documents

Works are available from my online shop, Dolice Art Shop. For a deeper look at the world behind each work, please also visit my art portfolio, Dolice Design.

For those considering an exhibition, publication or interview, my Artist Profile (in English and Japanese) and Artwork Documentation (bilingual) are available as PDFs.

Works and documents

Dolice Art Shop Dolice Design Artist Profile (English PDF) Artist Profile (Japanese PDF) Artwork Documentation (bilingual PDF)
Ⅸ

FAQ

Can I purchase a work?

Yes. Works are available from my online shop, Dolice Art Shop.

Do you use AI in your work?

No. Every work is made by my own hand, without the use of AI.

How can I ask about a particular work?

Use “Enquire about this work” on each work's page. The contact form opens with the subject and the title of the work already filled in.

Can I invite you to exhibit, or request a feature or interview?

Yes. Please get in touch through the contact form on the home page. My Artist Profile and Artwork Documentation are available as PDFs for reference.

Where can I find the year and size of a work?

Each work's page lists its year, technique and size, together with the words behind it and its record of awards, exhibitions and publications.

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More from Dolice

Smartphone AppsApps I have built and run on my own since 2013→ BrandingWebsite design and operation, with case studies→ Dolice LabsFour AI knowledge bases→ ReadingLacrima, moving stories, and Mystery, strange ones→
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