Title: Dig-ital City
Concept: An imaginary city drawn on a canvas with a felt-tip pen
Monex Group launched the "ART IN THE OFFICE" program in 2008, in association with Arts Initiative Tokyo (AIT), a non-profit organization, to support up-and-coming artists. Under the program, the wall of one of our office meeting rooms is offered to artists as a presentation space for their work.
An open invitation was made to artists, and as a result of a rigorous selection process, Mr. Kyohei Sakaguchi was chosen from a number of applicants as the 2008 award winner.
Mr. Sakaguchi gained inspiration from technical drawings of condominiums and landscape photographs of cities, and then made a freehand drawing of buildings, streetscapes, and roads on the wall of the meeting room - using only a felt-tip pen.
The drawing on the wall is an "imaginary city" created by Mr. Sakaguchi. This unique cityscape consisting of various buildings and elements of nature can be enjoyed from within the meeting room.
Profile of Mr. Kyohei Sakaguchi
Mr. Sakaguchi was born in Kumamoto Prefecture in 1978, and graduated from the Department of Architecture, School of Science and Engineering at Waseda University.
As a university student, Mr. Sakaguchi harboured doubts about the way contemporary architecture was constructed, and conducted research into obscure buildings and gardens in the city that were made by people who were not architectural specialists. His graduation thesis was based on research into houses of so-called "homeless" people and was later published by Little More as Zero Yen House in 2004.
The book has since been published in numerous countries around the world, and took Mr. Sakaguchi to exhibitions in Belgium and Mexico. He held his first solo exhibition in 2006 at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada, followed by a road show across the country. In 2007, he participated in exhibitions in Nairobi, Kenya, and Saint Nazaire, France.
In January 2008, he published Tokyo Zero Yen House - Zero Yen Life, which describes the lives of the homeless city-dwellers who live along the Sumida River, and in April 2008, he published a novel, Edison of the Sumida River.
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