Keiichi Tanaami was born in 1936 in Tokyo. After graduating from Musashino Art University in the early 1960s, he worked across the mediums of art, graphic design, experimental film and numerous other fields.

Keiichi Tanaami’s creative style brims with psychedelic power, which has made him extremely popular with younger art fiends. He was a pioneer of magazine design in the 1960s and is a veteran follower of avant-garde and underground culture. Each work, be it poster, experimental animation, or 3D image, exudes his unique, super graphic worldview represented by an outrageous use of psychedelic colors, infinitely expanding screen dots, and menacingly whirling curves. Worthy of note is the fact Tanaami enjoys strong support fromGeneration Y, who are often said to lack historical awareness. Their support goes beyond mere “worshipping the antediluvian patriarch”, as they sense a kind of “newness” in his work.

The psychedelic revolution experienced by Tanaami, who moved to America in the mid ’60s, was crucial as it showed that “other realities” were possible through the expansion of consciousness. Bonding that experience to his unique, psychotherapeutic approach, Tanaami digs up and draws on his own deep memories and dreams on a daily basis; exteriorising an unconscious power through the conscious method of graphics. The iconographic power of Tanaami’s work comprises the superhuman volume emanating from this unconscious power and the amazing fruition of his method of control.

Tanaami’s activity is a conduit for the unconscious desire of young people for a power that can be directly and physically sensed in our present age of diluted historical consciousness. It is the trance-like graphic power of an age that goes beyond conscious design.