Atsushi Kaga (Japanese, 1978 - ) Atsushi Kaga is a Japanese visual artist, working in mixed media, painting, drawing, animation and sculpture. He is best known for his practice steeped in popular culture. Born in 1978 in Tokyo, the artist got his education at the Tama Art Institute in Tokyo, graduating in 1997, and at the National College of Art and Design – NCAD in Dublin, where he got his BA in Fine Art Painting in 2005. Atsushi also got a diploma at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa, Cork, in 2001. He now livesand works between New York and Dublin, Ireland. Complex and spirited, the works of Atsushi Kaga contain much of the darkly humorous rebellion found in the contemporary drawing practices of artists like Yoshimoto Nara, David Shrigley and Marcel Dzama. Psychologically intense and intentionally deceptive in their surreal, whimsical nature, Kaga weaves his collection of Anime-inspired characters in and out of harrowing narrative. Drawing inspiration from personal experience, social satire and popular culture, Kaga imbues his characters with a real world sensibility, in addition to cartoonish fantasy. Quietly relevant, and at times heartbreaking, the work of Atsushi Kaga transcends the two-dimensionality of its medium. Atsushi Kaga has participated in solo and group exhibitions at a variety of international institutions including mother’s tankstation, Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Nicolas Krupp Gallery, Basel, Switzerland, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland, Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, MassArt, Boston, and Location One, New York.