Hajime Sorayama

Hajime Sorayama (1947-) is a Japanese artist working in a hyper-realistic style. With brush, pencil, acrylic paint and an airbrushed finish, he has created a body of instantly identifiable work, whether they be robotic or erotic.

Sorayama entered Japan's Chuo Art School in 1967. Upon graduation in 1969, he found employment as a comprehensive illustrator at the Tokyo-based advertising firm Asahi Tsushin-sha. In 1972, he began working independently as a free-lance illustrator. His path was clear by 1978, when he began publicly showing the female figures which he had been developing over the years. This was the same year he also began to draw robotic figures. Soon the two would be combined to create "Gynoids," or Sexy Robots -- female cyborgs which combine sensuously human body parts with inorganic, machine-like connections, protrusions and coverings. In the 1980s a number of books of his work was published in Japan, among them Sexy Robot, Pin-Up and Venus Odyssey. In 1989, the first non-Japanese book of his work was published by Taco in Berlin.

When Sorayama had his first U.S. one-person show at the Tamara Bane Gallery in Los Angeles, he was already a rising international star. Tamara Bane was an influential gallery which helped create the substantial American market for so-called "pin-up" art. Together with owner Robert Bane's publishing arm, Robert Bane, Ltd., the gallery launched the careers of a number of artists, including Olivia de Berardinis. In the 1990s, Tamara Bane specialized in, but was not limited to, pin-up art and artists. Artists as diverse as Mark Ryden, Robert Williams, Eyvind Earle and Aldo Luongo were given one-person shows at the gallery.

The late 1990s were a busy period for Sorayama. In addition to limited edition lithographic prints and giclees published by Robert Bane Ltd., Soroyama's futuristic and Shunga-style work was serialized monthly in Penthouse magazine and graced the pages of Playboy and other magazines. He consulted as a conceptual artist for the films, Brain Dead (1992), Time Cop (1994), Spawn (1997), Night Watch (1997), and the HBO TV series, Perversions of Science (1997). In 1995, he designed a mechanical warrior for the science-fiction B-movie, Space Trucker.

In the late 1990's, Sorayama was approached by the Sony Corporation to design an organic robotic form. It became the famous "AIBO" dog, the first artificial intelligence pet, which received Japan's highest design award and was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. and the Smithsonian Institution for their permanent collections.

In 2009, Sorayama was one of 25 Japanese artists to be commissed by Nike to create a tribute to the company's White Dunk. An interview with Sorayama can be seen at www.whitedunk.com

Further reading

• : Hajime Sorayama. Verlag Taschen, 1993, ISBN 3-8228-9421-4
• Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha: Sorayama - Hyper Illustrations. Nippon Shuppan Hanbai Inc, ISBN 4-568-50102-4
• Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha: Sorayama - Hyper Illustrations Part 2. Nippon Shuppan Hanbai Inc, ISBN 4-568-50129-6