Mukai Shuji (1940- ) creates works using symbols as a motif, but his thinking was ahead of his time. At a time when most artists were working on innovating materials and drawing techniques, Mukai's idea was to fill the world with symbols, which are not even material, and this foreshadowed later environmental art.
Mukai himself viewed painting as a space (a world) and was interested in entering its interior. Therefore, he said that among the Gutai artists, he was most interested in Kazuo Shiraga, whose work embodied this concept.
At Check, a jazz café in Umeda, Osaka, which opened in 1962, Mukai covered the walls, furniture and everything else in the shop with symbols. Nowadays, various means of expression such as installations are recognized as art, but at that time, there were probably very few artists who practiced this kind of expression. His expression transcends the material as a material, and symbols are drawn on anything. Looking at past photographs, Mukai himself is no exception, and in some of his works, the person on whose symbols he has drawn has entered the work. Mukai's symbols multiply and eventually engulf everything.

"Toilet covered in symbols" at Karuizawa New Art Museum

Mukai working on covering the museum's toilets with symbols (2014)