Yutaro Inagaki

Biography

Yutaro Inagaki (b. 1998) is a Japanese contemporary artist and figurative painter based in London, working across painting and sculpture. His paintings depict anonymous, faceless hybrid figures drawn from meme culture, gaming aesthetics, and AI-generated imagery, capturing a distinctly post-digital sense of identity shaped by screens, feeds, and constant image circulation. Despite this heavily mediated visual language, the emotional register of his work is often surprisingly tender, dealing with loneliness, isolation, and overstimulation rather than irony alone. Inagaki's sculptural practice is anchored by his ongoing series of dog forms built from discarded computer keyboard keys, foam, and puffer jacket materials, works that feel like creatures born from technological and urban debris, at once domestic and post-human. His practice explores the coexistence of softness and armor, synthetic protection, and the cold anonymity of contemporary city life, themes that connect his London studio practice to an earlier period of street art in Tokyo. Inagaki's work has been shown internationally and recognized with awards including the Mardel Acquisition Prize at the CAN Art Fair 2026, and he is represented by galleries including Catapult Contemporary. At Art Dubai Special Edition 2026, his paintings and keyboard-key dog sculptures were presented by SHANKAY alongside Eduardo Enrique and Isaac Sullivan, in a booth exploring humanity, image, and meme culture in dialogue with technology.