WAVE Exhibition Sweepstakes |
A Chance to Own
Original Artwork

After a successful debut at JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles, the dynamic exhibition WAVE | New Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts will soon travel to our sister locations in Sao Paulo and London. To celebrate the first stop of its global tour, we’re thrilled to announce a sweepstakes giveaway of an original artwork by two of the exhibition’s featured artists. One lucky entrant will win  “Resolution Matryoshka No.006” (2021) – a new, original piece by Jenny Kaori, a rising star contemporary artist known for her colorful riffs on pop culture. A second winner will receive “Tangle” (2016) – an original piece by exhibition curator, Hiro Sugiyama, whose prolific output includes figurative and abstract painting, superrealistic portraiture, prints, photography, and collage.

Kaori and Sugiyama are two of 55 Japanese contemporary artists spotlighted in the exhibition, many of whom are showing their work outside Japan for the first time. The traveling exhibition introduces a diverse array of artists, from established to emerging, showing how their creations in books, magazines, comics, animation, posters and other media extend far beyond the well-known manga and anime styles and represent the full spectrum of Japanese graphic art today. (Learn about Japanese manga and anime by reading our article here.) Included artists range from veteran professional illustrators such as Teruhiko Yumura (b.1942), Akira Uno (b.1934) and Keiichi Tanaami (b.1936) to young artists like Masanori Ushiki (b.1981) and Mayu Yukishita (b.1995), many of whom bridge the worlds of illustration, animation, commercial art and fine art.

Exhibited work by Kaori here.
Exhibited work by Sugiyama here.

To commemorate the Los Angeles premiere of this ground-breaking global touring exhibition, we invite you to enter to win and take home a piece of Jenny Kaori’s or Hiro Sugiyama's original artwork. As the WAVE exhibition travels on, don’t miss the chance to start your own collection of cutting-edge Japanese contemporary art.

HOW TO ENTER

There are two ways to enter. You may enter by either option below:

Enter on Facebook:
1. LIKE & FOLLOW the JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles Facebook account;

2. LIKE the Sweepstakes announcement post on Facebook; and

3. TAG two friends with the social media handle on Facebook in a comment on the Sweepstakes announcement post;

Enter via mail:
Mail a postcard with your name, address, phone number, and email address with a note referencing the WAVE Sweepstakes, to JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles, Attn: PR & Marketing Department, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. Suite 205, Los Angeles, CA 90028 . Upon receipt of the mail-in entry, you will receive one (1) entry into the Sweepstakes. All mail-in entries must be hand-printed.

There is no limit on the number of entries per person, but there may only be one entry per day, and any entries attempted through the use of agencies, or robotic, repetitive, automatic, programmed or similar methods, or through the use of fraudulent email accounts are prohibited and will not be accepted.

Eligibility: U.S. and Japan
 

PRIZES

Two winners will receive either “Resolution Matryoshka No.006” (2021) – a new, original piece by Jenny Kaori, or “Tangle” (2016) – an original piece by Hiro Sugiyama.

Artist Profiles

Jenny Kaori
Self-taught artist Jenny Kaori (b. 1987) works in animation, character design, and apparel. She typically depicts the young people who inhabit Japan’s sub- and mainstream cultures. She uses vivid colors — and a predominantly pink color palette — to create strong, mischievous female figures who transcend gender boundaries and challenge stereotypes of femininity and girlishness.

Read more.

Though typically rendered using a playful, cute aesthetic, the girls in her illustrations overflow with attitude.

Kaori has worked with Shibuya-based fashion brand, galaxxxy, and has collaborated with Betty Boop, FLCL, Adobe & FUJIFILM. She has also worked with the k-pop group EXID, and in 2020 she created four bold new designs for adidas. She has exhibited her work in WAVE 2019 and WAVE 2020 in Tokyo, and her work has been published in ILLUSTRATION 2016 (Shoeisha, 2016), Fashion illustration: Outfit of the Day (PIE Creators' File Series, 2020) (Japanese Edition), New Retro Illustration (Pie International, 2020) and Roller Derby / Girl Gang: An Art Anthology (Schiffer, 2020).

Hiro Sugiyama
Hiro Sugiyama (b.1962) is a Tokyo-based artist whose work includes figurative painting, super-realistic portraiture, abstract art, prints, photography and collage. In much of his work, he explores points of intersection between dualities—life and death, reality and unreality, abstract and concrete, digital and analog—expressing the narrow space where opposites meet.

Read more.

Over the past decade, Sugiyama has held regular solo exhibitions in Tokyo galleries including Hiromi Yoshii Roppongi, AD Gallery and WATOWA Gallery. He has also been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Shanghai, London, Italy, Germany and South Korea, and he was one of nineteen Japanese artists spotlighted in the 2001 Superflat exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He has also published numerous books including Abstract Portrait (2011), Vision Quest (2005) and Out of Science (2002). He is an organizer of the WAVE exhibition in Tokyo and a curator of this JAPAN HOUSE touring exhibition.