Sundance
Film Festival, 2004
Whitney Artport
Permanent collection
NYC 3000
MTA Arts & Design, Fulton Center 2023
Featured Works
Biography
MOTOMICHI is an artist based in New York, and a graduate of Parsons School of Design. His work grows out of themes that have fascinated him since childhood, irrational fears and mythical monsters, rendered in a stark three-colour palette of black, white and red and a bold graphic style shaped by his Japanese roots and years spent in the US and Latin America.
His animated films and projection installations have been shown internationally, from the New Museum in New York to the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris. Recent projects include Cannonballs with the Balloon Museum and NYC 3000, commissioned by MTA Arts & Design for New York's Fulton Center, and his work is held in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum's Artport.
Practice
MOTOMICHI creates immersive visual worlds where animation, architecture and public space become stages for a recurring cast of imagined creatures. Working across projection, moving image, sculpture and installation, he employs a highly disciplined graphic language of black, white and red to construct environments that are simultaneously playful, unsettling and emotionally ambiguous.
Rather than using animation solely for narrative, MOTOMICHI treats it as a spatial medium. Buildings, galleries and urban screens become animated landscapes where mythological figures, abstract forms and imagined ecosystems unfold across architectural surfaces. The simplicity of his visual language allows the work to operate at vastly different scales while maintaining its immediacy, transforming complex environments into immersive graphic experiences that are instantly recognisable.
Underlying the practice is an exploration of memory, folklore and irrational fear. His creatures are neither heroes nor monsters but symbolic figures that inhabit the threshold between familiarity and uncertainty, inviting audiences to reconnect with the imaginative logic of childhood. Across every medium, MOTOMICHI demonstrates how animation can extend beyond the screen to become an architectural and experiential form of storytelling.
MOLTEN Perspective
MOTOMICHI has developed one of the most distinctive visual languages in contemporary immersive art. Through extraordinary restraint (limiting himself almost exclusively to black, white and red) he demonstrates that powerful immersive experiences do not depend on visual complexity but on clarity, rhythm and character. His instantly recognisable creatures have become a contemporary mythology capable of inhabiting galleries, public architecture and urban media alike.
What distinguishes MOTOMICHI's practice is the way it merges the graphic immediacy of animation with the spatial possibilities of immersive installation. Rather than treating architecture as a surface for projection, he transforms buildings into living narratives populated by figures that are simultaneously humorous, unsettling and deeply human. His work draws audiences in through play while quietly exploring universal themes of fear, memory and imagination.
Within contemporary immersive art, MOTOMICHI demonstrates that a strong artistic language can transcend medium, scale and technology. By extending animation beyond the screen into shared public space, he has established a practice that bridges illustration, moving image and architectural experience, creating immersive environments that remain visually unforgettable long after the projection has disappeared.
Explore the Artist
Themes
Myth & Storytelling · Urban Experience · Public Space · Movement · Perception · Transformation · Identity
Commissioning Information
Suitable for — Museum & Exhibition Contexts · Gallery Contexts · Light Festivals · Public Art Commissions · Immersive Exhibitions · Cultural Institution Commissions
Industries — Arts & Culture · Festivals · Museums · Public Realm · Corporate · Transport · Entertainment · Education
Project Types — Commission · Exhibition · Festival · Temporary Installation · Touring Work · Workshop · Public Art Program · Projection Mapping
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