In this work “Face Replica 2″, Hakamata first created one head of a man by curving out a wooden bear. Then, he cut it in theree pieces and rebuilt two sculptures by complementing the missing part with colorful acrylics. So this work was born along with “Face Replica 1″ .

In Japan, wooden bear was a typical sculpture which was often seen in executive’s rooms or sold in souvenir shops. It used to be the icon of a sculpture which Japanese can easily imagine. It is funny to see the bear reshaped in a completely different sculpture.

Hakamata happened to found David Lynch’s (American film maker/visual artist) face posted on the wall of his studio and decided to reference it in this work because of its shape rather than who he is. Therefore, Hakamata created his face not trying to copy exactly as it is. Combining a wooden bear with David Lynch’s face was done unintentionally.

Compared to the striped part of the sculpture, the rough surface of the face is strongly visible in the black part which was originally curved out from a wooden bear, . Hakamata uses vivid stripes in his work.?In our interview, he explained about the reasons as below.

Stripes are very strong visible elements. They destroy shapes. If I use only one color for a sculpture, its shape could be more visible. Stripes in my work block our sights’ ability to recognize the shapes.