More fun stuff that Emily found at Design Festa:
I saw a guy carrying a giant pole that had a girl with a giant swinging booger attached to it. It was a performance art exhibit that used the entire convention hall as its booth—he just walked around saying sumimasen, sumimasen the entire time.
Continue reading "Booger girl and box-headed men at Design Festa" »
Design Festa, the biannual two-day international freestyle art event, was held in Odaiba this weekend. It began in 1994 and is an outlet of expression for all kinds of artists ranging from amateurs to long time veterans. This year's event had a show of 2600 booths with over 7000 artists from more than 30 different countries. When I first walked in, I was bombarded with sensory overload -- french maids peddling knick knicks, middle-aged people dancing with cardboard boxes on their head, artists wearing gas masks and painting on giant murals, multicolored animation on theater-sized screens, and more. It was like I left reality and stepped into a trippy, artsy wonderland. Here are some snapshots of my little expedition. (by Emily Co)
The picture above proves the power of makeup—guys beware!
Continue reading "Report from Design Festa, Asia's biggest art festival " »
(Thanks, Aaron!)
Ryohei Tanaka is a Japanese artist who does drawings, papercuts, and prints of funny-cute subjects, like this little girl and her olive friend. He has his work categorized as "serious" and "not so serious." Some of his stuff is currently on display at the Giant Robot store in San Francisco.
Wow, I love this person's art. This person = Erina Matsui, one of artist collective Yamamoto Gendai's future feature artists. This piece is called Food Chain-Star Wars! (2008). Matsui is famous for her provocative self-portraits.
Photographer Keiichi Nitta is having a fun exhibit at the Constant Gallery in September titled "I think Japanese People Should Be More Open." I think the name of the exhibit and these three pics say it all. Make sure you check it out if you're in LA in September.
This giant anime girl head is the work of one of Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki artists. He goes by the name Mr. and was first recognized by the contemporary art scene while drawing characters on the back of shopping receipts.
Mr. is best known for his slightly pedophilic otaku-Lolita drawings and installations, like the series depicting a normal-sized man (always naked) with his miniature-sized anime girl toy. A slightly NSFW example after the jump.
If Tokyo were to meet the apocalypse, or turn into a zombie-infested dystopia like Manhattan in I Am Legend, it will probably look a lot like this amazing Photoshopped image of Shibuya created by blogger/illustrator Tokyo Fantasy. Except in Tokyo, there would probably be giant cockroaches and lizards and crows romping the abandoned streets, and the lone warrior destined to save the world will be Ken Shimura. Or maybe Ichiro.
Tokyo Fantasy (via Pink Tentacle)
I had no idea that the traditional Japanese paper-folding craft of origami had become such a huge global fashion trend. The Origami Blog showcases all different kinds of ways in which origami is infiltrating our aesthetic, from the leather Chloe clutch shown above to bookshelves to type fonts to haute couture fashion.
This is a strangely mesmerizing animated music video created by Chiba-born artist Akino Kondoh. It features a folk-ish song about body-less children and a little Daria-esque morphing girl in black-and-white. Kondoh's work has been featured in museums across the world, including cities like Stockholm, Shanghai, and Boston.
Did you know that Sayama Forest, the woods that inspired Hayao Miyazaki in My Neighbor Totoro, is in jeopardy of becoming victim to urban sprawl? In a creative effort to prevent this, Pixar Animations Studio is teaming up with a bunch of cool contemporary artists in a mega-auction fundraiser on September 6th. After that, starting September 20, the art will be displayed at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum.
Goro Fujita is a Japanese-born German artist who uses digital media to create cool depictions of robots interacting with animals and nature. He has a cube-and-sphere obsession, like me. (I like geometric shapes and things.)
Fujita's web site via io9
You may not have heard of Takehiko Inoue, but you've seen his work. I, for one, was a huge fan of his 90s manga, Slam Dunk. It had the best characters and best action scenes ever. He's famous for doing pages and pages of manga where there are no words at all. Just facial expressions and action shots frozen as though captured by a professional sports photographer.
His new manga series, on display at the Ueno Royal Museum, is about the famous 17th century swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. To add a historical touch to his work, he used sumi ink and a calligraphy brush. True to his last-minute style, he was working on the giant centerpiece (a 3-meter-tall portrait of Miyamoto) until 3am the day the exhibit opened.
Inoue Takehiko on the Web (Thanks, Mary!)
Gajin Fujita is a LA-based Japanese-American artist who combines traditionally-inspired images with graffiti. His materials include semi-precious metals like white gold that he slabs onto wooden panels, plus spray-paint, plus stenciled images of cranes, geisha, samurai, and flowers.
His work is currently on display at the Haunch of Venison in London.
Design company D-Barcode came up with these creative alternatives to the conventional bar code. These actually work, and are currently being used on products sold in grocery stores across the country. It's a great example of the attention to detail and intricacy that the Japanese are known for—even for things that ordinarily don't have any artistic value. More pics after the jump.
There's a wonderfully cute new manga series called Afganisu-tan featuring Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries as animated characters hanging out. Each strip comes with a quick explanation educating readers about the countries. Cute and educational—the best combo ever.
Yuko Shimizu is a cool Japanese artist who does these dramatic, colorful illustrations for hot shot clients like MTV, Pepsi, Playboy, and M.A.C. Cosmetics.
Continue reading "Yuko Shimizu Draws Colorful, Dramatic, Crazy Chicks" »
I love this piece depicting these strange flower people that I saw at at the Media Arts Festival in Japan earlier this month. In this artist's universe, we are all born from flowers. And the flowers sometimes turn a little bit weedy.
Does anyone know the artist's name? It's not in the press kit they gave me.
This is Tomoko Sawada. She's a Japanese artist who likes to dress up in different Japanese female roles and take pictures of herself. Pretty awesome stuff—it's super creative, yet it evokes the spirit of the PuriKura culture—the majority of young Japanese girls who document every single moment in their lives with sticker pictures. Here's how she explains her work:
I was bound by an inferiority complex. When I started to take pictures, I loved my image taken in photos, which looked attractive and cute. I could make myself look like a model or an actress in pictures. As I looked at my pictures again and again, the gap between my real image and my image in a picture widened. In other words, my appearance could be changed easily, but my personality did not change.
Continue reading "Tomoko Sawada: Artsy Cosplayer from Kobe" »
A reader found this intricately captioned illo of Kim Jong Il in a bar bathroom in Okinawa. The letters above his middle finger say: "I am the last dictator of the 20th century. Fuck you!"
(Thanks, Bryan!)
Pachinko parlors are everywhere, and in busy places like Akiba and Shibuya, shops are becoming more and more creative as to how they market their shop. This one, called Everyday Fever, re-imagines the Pachinko ball as an afro.
Sydney Pink is a an American illustrator living in Tokyo who draws funny school girls being shot by space men and floating businessmen. It's super cute stuff.
Sydney Pink via Jean Snow
Japanese people eat beans all the time. Soy beas, red azuki beans, lima beans. But Takao Sakai may be the first to actually make them into a fashion statement. Here is one of his many works featuring bean-bearded people, part of a project in which he imagined a fictional world where people wore beans for fashion, like a tattoo or nail polish.
Who knew that our neighbors in South Korea had such a vivid imagination when it came to sculptures? Does anyone know what that sign above says? I think there's an English translation below it but I can't really see.
Kyushu artist Takayuki Senzaki transforms the traditional Japanese art of folding paper into a creative and awesome-looking new medium for interior design. He uses unique patterns and angled lighting to construct chandeliers, tables, and other room ornaments that make for great eye candy, all viewable in a unique exhibit entitled Orikami.
More pictures and an interview with the artist can be found on PingMag.
Yayoi Deki is a new Japanese artist whose repetitive patterns and bright colors are reminiscent of the other artist with the same first name, Yayoi Kusama. The main differences are that Deki is 30, not 80, and that she draws flowers, not dots. Although she does sometimes draw dots, too.
Also, Yayoi Deki's like this super cute bubbly girl.
There's an awesome exhibit right now at the Mori Art Museum titled "Roppongi Crossing 2007: Future Beats in Japanese Art." It introduces some of the most important classic futurist artists from Japan as well as up-and-coming ones.
Pictured here is Math Gates. Designed by two professors—one math prof from Kyoto University and one new media expert from Tokyo National University—it's an interactive installation in which visitors carry RFID cards with math problems on them. The goal is to reach a pre-determined number—kinda like in the license plate number game. The idea behind it is to gain a better understanding of a computer's logic circuits. After all, humans aren't that different from machines, and machines are made by humans.
The exhibit runs through Jan 14, 2008.
Roppongi Crossing (Exhibit main page)
Most artists don't see aliens and the Buddha as having anything to do with each other. But for Mariko Mori, they're as natural a fit as two peas in a pod. The Japanese-born, New York-based multimedia artist has a knack for combining unlikely objects — fiberglass with magnesium, plastic with solar transmitters, Boddhisatvas with 3-D projection — to create futuristic art with a heavy Zen influence.
Continue reading PLANET° Online Edition #2
(It's a quarterly hipster magazine I help edit!)
The Asian Art Museum in SF is featuring two exhibits curated by renowned photographer and art collector Hiroshi Sugimoto, starting tomorrow. Sugimoto is a modern man who moved to NYC in the 70s and kicked off his photography career with an exhibit at the MoMa. Since then, he's turned his attention to colecting rare antiques from Japan, museum curation, and most recently, fashion photography.
Pictured above is a 13th century Buddhist reliquary with a photograph of a seascape in the Caribbean inside. It's part of the History of History exhibit. Also included in this collection is a series of 9 giant indigo blue and green hanging scrolls with a Buddhist sutra that got burnt in a fire; a giant phallic symbol from the Jomon era placed atop a CIA stretcher from the 1950s; and a 17th century Rembrandt etching juxtaposed onto a Japanese scroll. Pretty rad stuff. The second exhibit, Stylized Sculpture, is a fashion exhibit (a rare feat for the ordinarily conservative museum) featuring iconic works by Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo.
It's a really elegant experience, highly recommended if you're in the area between now and January 6.
Asian Art Museum home page
Yayoi Kusama is one of Japan's greatest avant-garde artists. Born in the 1920s in Nagano, Kusama spent nearly two decades from her twenties to forties living in NYC and spearheading crazy art events in Central Park and Brooklyn. She's shared exhibits with Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenberg and represented Japan at the Venice Bienniale several times in throughout the 90s. The lady has a long history of mental illness, though, having suffered from hallucinations and obsessive thoughts as a child, and now chooses to live in a mental hospital in Tokyo, right near her art studio where she continues to produce masterpieces epitomized by repetitive dots and spots (allegedly inspired by aforementioned childhood hallucinations) to this day.
Her latest exhibits open in Hong Kong and Korea this month. More pics after the jump.
Back in the 70s, Kohei Yoshiyuki used to hang out late-night in Tokyo parks to watch and photograph illegitimate couples—many of them gay—make out in the dark. Now, for the first time ever in the US and after 27 years of gathering dust in the now-commercial photographer's collection, you can see these grainy, voyeuristic photos at the Yossi Milo Gallery in NYC.
What was most interesting about it was the number of people who, instead of joining in the sexual acts themselves, were actually just milling around watching. There'd be, for example, a photo of two guys kissing by a wall, and then two more guys peering into their faces, and another two guys a few feet away, just staring. It's a subculture from the past that I didn't know anything about until I saw these pictures.
Exhibit's on until October 20th.
Link
Like all great artists with careers that span decades, Tezuka Osamu's work can be divided into different periods. Most of us have seen or read episodes of Astro Boy or watched Metropolis, both from his early career (late 1940s-early 50s).
Apollo's Song is one of Tezuka's mid-career works, from the manga artist's transitional period. It was completed in 1970, and it's about a boy who has never known love. He was born to a slutty mom, and as a result, every time he sees public displays of affection, it triggers an uncontrollable rage in him. After killing several animals mid-mating, he is checked into a hospital where the doctors put him through an intense and unusual reconfiguration regime. What follows is an amazingly creative and introspective adventure into hallucinations, hypnotic states, and glimpses of the past and future including Nazi soldiers, cyborg queens, and zoo animals on an abandoned island. And at the center of it all, a boy who needs to learn to love in order to be left alone. Pretty amazing.
Vertical Inc—the Japanese publishing house that puts out beautiful reproductions of Japanese manga and other great Japanese lit with awesome covers designed by Chip Kidd—just came out with the English version of Apollo's Song this June. It's a really quick fun read with all original drawings by Tezuka.
Get your copy here.
Rumors are flying about Kanye West's new album, Graduation, whose cover features a Takashi Murakami flying teddy bear spewing out of a giant mouth. People are psyched because the teddy bear is wearing those patented Nike's worn by Marty McFly in Back to the Future II. Maybe Kanye's highly anticipated album will help those who have been fighting to get the "McFly 2015s" back into existence and onto the consumer market.
I love that pop culture has become so multidirectional that you can now combine American hip hop with Japanese retro cute art with kicks from an 80s movie.
For more Super Flat fun a la Murakami, check out this video.
I thought the Sudoku craze might have peaked and subsided by now, but no. I was just combing through Vertical Inc's catalog when I saw this book, titled: Oekaki: Paint by Sudoku. It works exactly as it sounds—by solving Sudoku puzzles of varying degrees of difficulty, you end up drawing pictures of things like geisha girls and the Statue of Liberty. Sound like something you or your Sudoku-obsessed mother would want for her birthday? You can buy the book here.
The Astro Boy exhibit's bringing all kinds of youngsters to the Asian Art Museum—especially on Matcha Thursdays, when they open up the galleries and have special events, like DJs, live action cartoonists, tea ceremonies, and guys who will tell you about 100 different manga in 20 minutes.
So maybe you missed DJ Tonk's awesome music tonight, but don't worry, he's local (SF/Tokyo) and will be in LA and San Diego over the weekend.
Check out upcoming Matcha events here.
I'm in Tokyo for a week to attend a friend's wedding, so I went to the newly opened Tokyo Midtown Complex with my mom. I didn't think there was anything all that special about it--a fancy Starbucks, some nice detail on the architectural design front, and a lot of wealthy people and grandmas checking out the scene--but I did dig this giant black orifice sculpture. I decided to put my mom inside and take a picture.
Retired Weapons is an art project started by peace activists in Japan. The idea is that, if enough people have pictures of weapons sprouting flowers--not shooting bullets--on their desktops, it would create a viral message of peace. I don't know how well it's working, but the images are pretty cool, and the message is simple and nicely executed. Also reminds me of the lady planting daisies(?) in ceramic grenades.
Sako Kojima's an artist, but she doesn't just draw and make things. She becomes things. And since her obsession is with animals and nature, and how humans relate to animals, she sometimes shows up at her art exhibits dressed like one and acting like one. Here's a picture of her being a hamster in Paris.
You can see Kojima's art at the Yamamoto Gendai museum until April 4.
The Gloaming [Yamamoto Gendai]
If I ever buy a house, and decide to tile my kitchen, I'm going to ping this talented Etsy artist who makes Mario mosaic tiles.
Did you know that in Japan, "Mosaic" refers more often than not to blotted out private parts in porn videos? So if you tell someone there that you are buying a mosaic-ed Mario, they'll probably think you're into 8-bit porn.
(Thanks, Jenna!)
