Yoshitoshi Kanemaki

I’m fascinated by the work of Yoshitoshi Kanemaki, a Japanese artist who creates figurative sculptures that blend classical woodcarving techniques with surreal conceptual art. 

His medium of choice is camphor wood, which he carves a single block by hand into lifelike, human-scale figures imbued with a dreamlike, uncanny quality.

A central motif in Kanemaki’s work is multiplicity of the self. Many of his sculptures feature multiple faces, heads, or limbs emerging from a single figure. The expressions range from serene to anguished. 

This technique visually externalizes inner psychological states and the fractured identity of modern life. Some works show a face split into dozens of expressions, radiating in a circle like a mandala of moods, simultaneously beautiful and unsettling. 

His sculptures have been described as visual haikus, with each one a meditation on the complexities of human emotion, rendered in physical form.