Cosmic Reflections // Naoto Hattori// Dorothy Circus Gallery

Naoto Hattori was born in 1975 in Yokohama, Japan, and graduated from the School of Visual Arts (NY) in 2000. He has won many art competitions thanks to his unmistakable technique and majestic palette that goes back to traditional art. His masterful brushstrokes on board give shape to hyper-detailed imaginaries reminding of Bosch and Arcimboldo’s paintings, which the artist re-interprets through his own symbolism. Instead of fruits and vegetables, the artist combines multi-eyed faces, plants, and gilded planets, gravitating in the universe of the mind where puffy clouds, anthropomorphized animals reveal us what happens in a mind when a stream of consciousness is underway. This overwhelming process drags all the rest in a vortex of fireflies and magnetic spirals. What most strikes of these studies is the artist's genial obsession with minimal details that he treats carefully in the compressed surface of a few centimeters or extends on a huge board. They are real metamorphosis involving the whole body to turn it into sparks and shreds of magic. In the middle of a surreal transformation, everything is about madness; nothing is certain.