HARRY KAZAN

Harry Kazan is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist based in Japan. His creations are inspired by both contemporary and traditional Japanese subculture. Well known as a tattoo artist, he masterfully techniques and patterns of Japanese Irezumi (Traditional Tattoo), and he transfers his skills to his artistic creations.

His research aims to use traditional objects to reveal their own soul and history within a actual and offbeat environment. For his inspiration, Harry Kazan studies old Japanese history and religion to understand what has shaped Japanese identity today.

Like the technique of tattooing—writing a story on skin—he engraves patterns and new stories onto objects. Although his creations are apparently illustrative, he offers a deep critique of our current production of objects and consumerism. His installation projects ourselves into the past through these objects and confronts our being with the present, illustrating that we only pass through this world, while things remain.

His sensitive vision and his writing, which incorporate Japanese pictorial codes, draw the viewer into a seemingly dreamlike vision of Japanese tales and legends, but transposed into our present world.