Hiroyuki Ishii's digitally drawn dreamscape interiors

Tokyo-based illustrator Hiroyuki Ishii produces minimalist, digital line drawings of surreal interior landscapes, influenced by Japanese art, Italian design and RPG (role playing) video games.

A series of surreal illustrations based on rooms created for the group exhibition Interiors and exhibited at Kugayama Station Gallery features a Dalí-esque dreamscape imagery filtered through Hiroyuki’s simple style. Explaining how he conceives the content, Hiroyuki said: “What’s in the room. What will happens in there… I wanted to see what kind of feeling you can get if you are in there with unusual items and interiors.”

A zine produced last year for Park Shop & Gallery Hirai titled Silent Sea tells a lose conceptual narrative around the sights seen in the rooms and the scenarios that might unfold.

The writing that accompanies the scenes and scenarios throughout his zine use the Japanese present tense, speaking directly to the reader in the second person as if the narration of a video game. One room scene, set within two windowed walls, translates to: “You came to where you can see two sceneries. On the left side, you can see the ocean. On the right side, you can see the field. Stars are falling into the ocean. Stars were born from the field. One horizon was made by liquid, another horizon was made by plants.”

Hiroyuki is currently showing his work in a number of group exhibitions in Japan, and will be displaying his work in a solo show at Tokyo Jiyugaoka Art Gallery in November.