At first I thought these images by Japanese artist Kazuki Takamatsu were 3-D depth mattes, renderings of 3-D CGI models in which shades of gray are assigned to areas according to their distance from the virtual camera. (Their white, sculptural quality also brought to mind the paintings of A. Andrew Gonzalez.)
However, even if CGI depth mattes, or something similar, are the source material or inspiration for them, Takamatsu’s finished works are actually gouache paintings, and fairly large in scale as you can see from these photos at Gallery Tomura.
Takamatsu uses the term Distanfeerism to name his style. Other than that, and the fact that he graduated from Tohoku University of Art and Design, I can find very little information about the artist.
Takamatsu’s site is in Japanese, but there are link titles in English.
(Note: the sites linked here may be considered mildly NSFW.)
[Via Jason Kottke]
This is a really surreal & disturbing piece of work. I think because the models have no facial features, but are very much 3 dimensional it adds to the discomfort that i feel as an audience.
Thank you for sharing images of this artist’s work. I don’t know why but I find them disturbingly pleasing. Being in the engineering and surveying field I am familiar with height field mapping (USGS DEM files) and recongnized that characteristic right of. I actually brought one of the images into a 3d program to see how they would view. Brilliant to have done such a wonderful job in a conventional medium. Love your website. Thanks.