Tsunehisa Kimura


Tsunehisa Kimura was a Japanese artist influential in graphic design.

Style

His photomontages imagine a surreal world of ongoing apocalypse and often showcase the encroachment of nature and natural phenomenon on man-made structures and the urban built environment.
His most famous ‘Visual Scandals’ series was published in book form by Parco, Tokyo in 1979 and is still available second hand.

In popular culture

Kimura provided the cover artwork to Midnight Oil's 1984 album Red Sails in the Sunset. Additionally, altered versions of one of his works appear as cover art for Climax Blues Band's 1980 album Flying the Flag and Cut Copy's 2011 album Zonoscope. Cut Copy would eventually go on to win the Artisan Award for Best Cover Art at the ARIA Music Awards of 2011.


Design commentators have drawn attention to similarities between Kimura’s work and the CGI envisioning of the Tom Cruise film Oblivion, particularly in the design of promotional material.