Kei Sugiyama’s art takes inspiration from Aristotle’s philosophy of metaphysics and, by extension, the gray zone between absence and existence. His motivation for painting is to evoke a being expected to be present, that is, a subject that occurs in the mind as a result of the actual motif presented on canvas.

As a Nihonga painter, the concept of a master-servant relationship in art is not foreign to Sugiyama. One of the basic principles of Nihonga is to observe the subject (or a model), carefully sketch it, and then begin production. An artist’s job was merely to bring out the best in the subject. In other words, a painter is the subordinate of his subject. Yet, as a contemporary artist, Sugiyama seeks to explore relationships beyond that.

Sugiyama’s art aims to establish a painting in a metaphysical state that represents an existence that is illustrated precisely by its absence. By depicting the traces of a subject’s involvement, even if it does not appear in the painting, it is possible to conjure a mental image of scenes where the subject was present. A half-empty cup of coffee that had gone cold sitting next to a lightly creased newspaper implies that someone was once in the room sipping the hot coffee while reading the morning paper. Similarly, in Sugiyama’s paintings, an empty living room filled with chairs hints at the presence of a big family behind the scenes.

In addition, his works are composed with reference to existing works of art, such as that of Pierre Bonnard, except that the human characters from the original paintings are absent. The intentional modification distinguishes his art from traditional Japanese paintings which emphasize heavily on the borrowing of forms to a tee.

Based in Kanagawa, Sugiyama graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts with a doctoral degree in 2020.