Seeing the art around him, as well as learning artists from schools like Salvador Dali and Max Ernst, inspired Okuda to draw letters and use them as launch pads. In 1997, Okuda established a graffiti staffer named Jungle Jonky in 1997, and formed with local artists 2X, CDD and CBX to paint the old factory and railroad walls. In 2000, he moved to Madrid to study professionally in compliance. Here he picked up his own unique style, combining clean lines and colors. Street letters become circles, triangles and diamonds. “Later, I mixed street geometry with surreal works in the studio,” Okuda recalls. “I started to be my own role; humans, animals and trees were lost in geometric buildings and landscapes.”
Okuda’s image may be clear, but his information is complicated. Among the subjects he often paints, there are images of naked women, a homage to the form of women in the Renaissance. His figure is usually headless, but Okuda is not committed to anonymity. He will easily portray Adolf Hitler’s intimacy, full extra face, like Gandhi, or other prominent figures with polarization, such as Andy Warhol, Barack Obama, Charlie Chaplin, Kanye West and Tupac.
Despite his excessive use of colors, Okuda balances his image with the big gray. Usually, colors are transient, appearing in the form of faces, animals and rainbows. Gray is organic, representing the form, nature or internal depth below the surface.
Okuda’s actual process is a bit simple for the complex works that shrouded the building. He would ask his work surface, whether it is the wall, the ceiling or the train car, to choose the background color before he arrives. He doesn’t sketch. Using photos of animals, faces, bodies, Renaissance or Mesopotamian sculptures, as well as other sources of inspiration, Okuda transforms these images into his own visual language. “It would be more fun to continue to create in the process of art without planning too much before starting,” Okuda said. This is a way to be beneficial to him: Today, Okuda’s works are now scattered across the globe, appearing in New Delhi, Hamburg, Mexico, Beirut, Beirut, Africa, Africa, London, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, and more.
