ABOUT THE ARTIST | Inspired by popular culture in her native Japan and beyond, Yoko d’Holbachie’s paintings are at once vividly inviting and disturbingly dark. Candy colored creatures with wormlike tentacles travel through fantasy landscapes. Elements of Kawaii, Anime, Pop Art and Surrealism blend together in tightly rendered works that pull the viewer in with bright, cheerful energy and hold on with strange, complex elements. Time spent with these charming beasts elicits questions about our ideas of reality, appearance, power and danger. Is this seemingly sweet creature planning to do harm or does it actually need help? Is it reaching out with gentle tendrils or are those poisonous vines? Can first, second, even third impressions be trusted in art and life?
d’Holbochie was born in 1971 in Yokohama Japan. She studied design and art at Tama Art University in Tokyo. Her work has been exhibited in London, Rome, Los Angeles and Miami. Her 2012 exhibition at AFA, “My Strange Goddess,” marks her first solo show in the US.