Naoki Inagaki

Naoki Inagaki (b. 1989, Kyoto) is a Japanese contemporary artist based in Osaka. He began his artistic career in 2010 as a street poet in Kyoto, creating personalised calligraphic works inspired by the people he encountered. Over time, his practice expanded beyond the written word into painting, driven by an interest in human emotion, spontaneity and the possibilities of artistic expression.

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Largely self-taught as a painter, Inagaki works with a wide range of materials, from acrylics and oil pastels to his own specially developed glue-based ink. His paintings range from vivid, colourful compositions to bold monochrome works. Often working without preliminary sketches, he allows gesture, movement and instinct to guide the creative process, embracing the unexpected rather than following a predetermined image.

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Inagaki's transition towards painting was encouraged by an unexpected encounter with the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Seeing one of Basquiat's paintings reproduced on a T-shirt, he was struck by its uninhibited freedom and felt an immediate desire to paint himself. Since then, he has developed his own visual language, in which the physical act of painting is as significant as the finished image. His work reflects a continuing fascination with what it means to be alive, the freedom to express oneself and the relationship between human experience and artistic creation.

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