Oyster #89: Sorayama
Master illustrator Hajime Sorayama talks to designer Jonathan Zawada.
Master illustrator Hajime Sorayama's erotic imagery has probably permeated and played with your subconscious without you ever having known. Latex and leather wrap slick chrome skin and the soft and sensual intertwine with the inorganic to create the shiny, pretty things of pure fantasy cyborgs so sexually charged they once had a monthly spread in Penthouse. (He also created the initial design for AIBO, Sony's futuristic robotic pet.)
Sorayama studied and developed his signature technique of brush, pencil, acrylic paint and final airbrushing at Chuo Art School in the late sixties. His style of hyper-illustration has lent itself brilliantly to the futuristic aura, and the mythic and fantastical ideas explored in art, philosophy and culture in the seventies. In an era being taken over by technology, the technical skill of a master who creates these robotic forms in a super-reality that is entirely handmade is almost incomprehensible.
