INTERVIEW | YANOYA

ARTIST INTERVIEW｜YANOYA

Acrylic and marker on supports built from layer upon layer of cardboard. Across the surface unfold streetscapes that feel like a half-remembered side-scrolling game, populated by characters going quietly about their business.

Tokyo-based YANOYA never shows a face; a round pink logo stands in instead. We asked how it all began, and what the work is really about.

01　Everyday oddities, in a 2D game world

The starting point is the small stuff: little incidents and odd feelings from daily life, inflated through daydreams and fantasy.

“I like painting pictures where those everyday things get mixed up with the world of a Metroidvania-style 2D side-view exploration game.”

Houses, shops, a door to a room—buildings cut open like cross-sections, where characters walk, eat and pause. Looking at them is a little like exploring a game screen.

02　It started with a cap

It goes back to his teens.

“I was just hanging out with friends one night when an older guy we knew happened to pass by, got out of his car and said, ‘Here, have this,’ and gave me a cap.”

The logo on it, a friend explained, belonged to a graffiti spray-paint brand.

“I got this strange idea: if I’m going to wear this cap, I have to do graffiti. The next day I went straight to a home center and bought spray paint. That was the beginning.”

What began with a single can of spray paint gradually moved, through new tools and new places, onto canvas and cardboard.

“It’s changed form, but I’ve kept it going ever since.”

03　Try it first, think later

He doesn’t feel he has “arrived” at a style.

“What I do now isn’t a finished form. If anything, it’s constant trial and error—trying something first and thinking about it afterwards, over and over.”

He looks back at each finished painting, noting what worked and what to tackle next. The paintings have shifted, little by little, through that process.

Deciding what to paint, and cutting away what not to: facing the surface in front of him, over and over, is what has shaped the work.

“It’s completely my own way of working—facing the surface in front of me. That’s what made the pictures what they are now. I think they’ll keep changing.”

04　Characters without a self-portrait

Certain characters and motifs recur across his paintings, but they carry no special meaning.

“I just think, for this situation, this character fits—case by case. Personally, I’m not good at drawing one character as a self-portrait forever.”

Characters who resemble him, characters who are his opposite, characters who resemble someone close to him.

“All these different characters just exist in the picture, each in their own way.”

A logo in place of a face, and no single alter ego either: the artist always stays just outside the frame.

05　A fondness for useless things

Asked what matters most to him, he gives an unexpected answer.

“Things that are useful to someone, or that open a new page in history—I think smarter people can take care of that. If anything, what I value is the feeling of ‘I’ve gone and made something completely useless.’”

“The kind of waste that sits furthest from efficiency, from useful or not useful. I’d like to be able to paint that kind of affection.”

On humble cardboard, he paints scenes that serve no purpose and are all the more endearing for it—small surfaces packed with a richness that lives outside efficiency.