Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1946. He began his career as an artist in the late 1960s and is known as a representative of the Mono-ha movement. Throughout his nearly 50-year career, he has created installations, sculptures, and two-dimensional works using various industrial materials such as rubber, honeycomb, polyurethane, car parts, and wood. Haraguchi’s representative works include A-4E Skyhawk (1968-1969), an early work in which he reproduced part of a military aircraft in full scale, and the “Oil Pool” series, which he presented when he was selected as the first Japanese artist for Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany, in 1977. These works are delicate, yet powerful, in that they focus on the relationship between human beings and society, while taking material form as their subject matter.

Untitled is one of Haraguchi’s representative works in the “Oil Pool” series. An inverted image is projected onto the jet-black mirror surface created by waste oil, giving the viewer the illusion of another world beneath the floor. This kind of violence that transcends sensory understanding and invades our minds could also be said to be one of the characteristics of Haraguchi’s work.