Artist

KAWANO was born in Kobe in 1976 and currently resides in Kasaoka, Okayama Prefecture. Self-taught, he has since his teenage years possessed an exceptional talent for the plastic arts and a diverse style of work that defies classification by genre or material. Kawano is particularly skilled at creating environments that reproduce the worlds of his works, often composing his own musical accompaniments. Since opening his own gallery, Lagarto, in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, in 2008, he has exhibited both his past and new works while also continuing to create new plans and works. As an independent artist, he has focused on his own artistic activities without becoming beholden to existing values. In recent years, in addition to exhibiting his own work in solo exhibitions, he has also been creating public artworks accessible to the public at anytime. In these works, he aims to uncover now-dormant traditions and make them visible by creating symbolic artworks in a process that involves the local people. One example was GodDog -Inujima Doghouse Project- (2013), a public artwork set in the Seto Inland Sea that he instigated and realized along with some 2,000 collaborators from around the country.

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