The Meditative and Mysterious Films of Tatsuhiro Ariyoshi
Born in 1984 in Aichi Prefecture Japan, Tatsuhiro Ariyoshi is an independent animator who lives and works in Tokyo. He graduated from the Musashino Art University (Department of Imaging Arts & Sciences) in 2009, followed by a graduate degree from the animation department at the Tokyo University of the Arts.
I met Tatsuhiro last year at the Tokyo University of the Arts Geidai Animation Exhibition. His work chilled me to the bone. It’s very rare to see animation so purely and originally expressed, with extreme technical talent, and focus. His work borders the lines of daily meditation, working diligently through the most complicated and indefinable subject matters.
His films focus on revealing the hidden movements in the foundations of our world, and within us. With From A Stone, he unearths the inert flowing energy locked within the stone’s solid and cooled exterior:
In Inner Odyssey, he dives deep into the human experience, the powers of perception, and the rawness of our own emotions. The individual marks in his drawings swim collectively like a school of shimmering fish in an abyss, constantly restructuring a larger mass, and we begin to sense a unique vision of life that is, in many ways, euphoric:
