Different landscapes are a visualization of a certain utopia, ideal societies pursued for happiness. They may be an architect's Shangri-La of a holiday resort, or a physicist's perfection of a nuclear plant. They may be paradise to some, for others they pave the way to dystopia. In a mix of new and old mixed-media canvases, Japanese artist Kounosuke Kawakami exorcises his thoughts and experiences on the power of mankind versus nature. Constructed through the careful juxtaposition of flat planes of colour with the deep perspective of computer- generated architectural images, Kawakami uses his special visual language to describe the disjointed landscapes irrevocably changed by natural disasters or our actions. Collage, drawings, paintings and digital imageries are not all that the artist use to create his work; he would incorporate detritus from the real world, as a point of reference to the world’s materiality. Being Japanese, Kawakami is indeed no stranger to natural, or manmade disasters, big or small. Abandoned and battered buildings, industrial architecture and distorted hybrid figures populates his paintings, standing as metaphors for the deformation rendered by massproduction, technology and consumer culture. But Kawakami doesn’t curse such distortions entirely, instead he casts a nostalgic gaze into a fantasy world where ugliness and beauty merges and co-exists in harmony. “Much has been discussed about ‘the end of ideology’, yet the greater reality of our lives today is largely based on aspecific ideologies – socialism/communism, democracy/capitalism or variations on these. Today, as the downfall of the capitalist economic system looms amid the global debt crisis, pessimism is on the rise. Increasing inequalities are visible, expanding the economic power and stability of emerging countries. This recalls my question on what it is beyond ideology that we can hold as an ideal state, or the humane wish to search for one.” -- Kounosuke Kawakami