Born in 1978, Hiroki Tsukuda spent his early years watching Sci-Fi movies. This seems to have shaped his artistic career with a futuristic atmosphere – as you can see in his cool masks and graphic collages. PingMag visited Tsukuda’s two solo exhibitions currently in Tokyo, at Diesel Denim Gallery in Aoyama and Nanzuka Underground in Shibuya, and talked to him about his futuristic vision – and why he likes Max Ernst. [Via PingMag]
Paul Chan free DIY mp3 audio essays from the likes of Lao Zi to Maurice Blanchot.
Some of my favorites:
Paul Chan is an artist-activist with a well-trained digital eye. Though his work ranges from video projections of telephone-pole shadows to philosophically altered typefaces to HTML tales of prewar Baghdad, the Hong Kong-born American artist has made his most visible mark with digitized, hyper-colorful, animated films.
In his panoramic animations Chan culls from a rich array of sources, from outsider artist Henry Darger and surrealist poet and painter Henri Michaux to rapper Jadakiss and playwright Samuel Beckett. In Happiness (Finally) After 35,000 Years of Civilization, Chan computerizes Darger’s hermaphroditic Vivian girls and morphs the late artist’s soldiers into cell phone-carrying suits. The girls party in a dance hall of excess, but soon a woeful battle of wills perpetrated by the suits wreaks havoc on the Vivian idylls.
My Birds . . . trash . . . the future, featured at the Lyon Biennale, is a bright, flatly colored apocalyptic vision set against the backdrop of a lone gnarled tree and — depending on which side of the double-screen you watch — either a gradated rainbow or smoking sky. Corpses hang from nooses and lovers coo, as flapping birds and couples who communicate via mathematical equations visit the scene. Biggie Smalls even makes a deft appearance.
With elegant sleight of hand, Chan creates foreboding worlds of pleasure fraught with melancholy and destruction while maintaining a silver lining of hope. (ML) [Via Artkrush]
Also from Bomb Magazine:
NM: Let’s get back to your work for a second. Your double-sided video projection My Birds . . . Trash . . . The Future brings together Biggie Smalls and Pasolini in a world inflected with Goya, Beckett, the Bible and the contemporary presence of suicide bombers. There are many strands woven together in that piece. Where did it come from?
PC: I’m enraged that we have to think about faith in the twenty-first century. I’m fascinated and confused by it. I just keep saying, We’re in the twenty-first century. Marx thought in the nineteenth century that factories would be the new churches, and that industrialization would secularize the world. Now we realize that it’s a secular world, but only for a few people. A lot of people got left behind. And they’ve returned. Return of the repressed, in a way. It scares me, and it moves me. I had to find a way of articulating all those things: the idea of being a citizen of the twenty-first century, which sounds completely pompous; the confusion and anxiety that comes with trying to feel a kind of faith in the twenty-first century. Actually, it all started with my trip to Baghdad, where people wouldn’t talk to me sincerely unless I told them I was religious. The idea was if I didn’t have a religion, my words were not connected to a higher order that would punish me if I didn’t speak the truth.
What is it about the essence of the female that David Bray captures like no other? Grace, poise, poetry, knowing, power and centrea dark sexual subtext.. melting natural sensuality and feral energy. I look at David’s iconic girls and I see a metaphor for life. I want to wrap my naked thighs around the neck of a lion. I want to be that girl.. her crimson heart drumming the beat of life.. the scent of Joan Of Arc in her untamed hair we are told every day that the female species is in ruins reduced to believing that handbags are the Holy Grail.. vacuous, neurotic and chemically dependent on anthrax that we inject into our faces.. IVF.. cocaine.. a species defined by our catatonic eating disorders and unnecessary operations. David Bray knows this is a lie.. his pen is my sword.. Mary Anne Hobb.
Interview on Daze Digital
“GEISAI Artists at Giant Robot”
Takashi Murakami is well-known in the worldwide art scene for making thought-provoking paintings and sculptures, running the influential artist-led art enterprise Kaikai Kiki artist management group, curating the visionary Superflat show, and collaborating on high-end, high-profile projects with Louis Vuitton. He also coordinates the GEISAI art shows, which serve as an entry point for aspiring artists in Japan. The artists in this group show have won awards at GEISAI shows, and were hand picked to have their work presented in Los Angeles by Murakami and Eric Nakamura, publisher of Giant Robot magazine and owner of the Giant Robot stores and galleries.
Yasushi Ebihara projects his love for Macauley Culkin via large-scale paintings and sculpture, also commenting on the trappings of stardom and the entertainment business.
The subjects of Jaga Ichiro’s figure paintings are cute but resemble bodily fluids. The fluidity of their forms is elegant, organic, and somewhat disturbing.
Hisashi Kondo’s hyper realistic, larger-than-life portraits hang on screens like ghosts and can be seen from both sides.
Sashie Masakatsu articulates detailed sculptures and paintings of surreal, spherical architectural forms suspended over flat landscapes.
Rie Kawashima studied fashion in college, and creates dreamy images of girlhood with precise yet natural lines and occasional elegant, pastel shades.
Rieko Sakurai’s super stylized depictions of girls are as full of energy as they are of color. Her works convey the pop art power of the ‘60s subverted with a touch of darkness.
Miki Taira weaves textiles into humanoid forms of all sizes, imparting them with primitive-looking calligraphy.
Erika Yamashiro’s paintings feature restful women with fuzzy animals, mushrooms, sweets, and other feminine icons in dreamy settings.
September 15 – October 10
Reception: Saturday, September 15, 6:30 -10:00
Presented by Scion, Giant Robot, and Kaikai Kiki
GR2
2062 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
gr2.net
(310) 445-9276
Will Murai has some dope work.
Born in April 20th 1985 in Mogi das Cruzes, São Paulo, Brasil. Lives in a small town called Arujá.
Listening to:
The Cardigans, The Long Blondes, Hard-fi, Travis, The Killers, Blur, The Carpenters, Kings of Convenience and Youngblood Brass.
Activities:
Comicbook colorist and illustrator.
Hobbie:
Skateboarding.
Workstation:
iMac G5 connected to a Wacom Intuos3 6×11.
Likes:
Renaissance, 30s Pinups, Gadgets, McDonalds burgers and going bed late.
Dislikes:
Wake up early, tight deadlines and cockroaches.
Worked with:
Marvel Comics, Dc Comics, Dinamite Entertainment, Lew Lara agency, AlmapBBDO agency, Gringo agency, Superinteressante magazine, Camiseteria, and many others .
If you’re in NYC, checkout the show, Clip/Stamp/Fold, at Storefront about the architectural magazines in the 1960s and 1970s that instigated a radical transformation in architectural culture. (Check out more photos from Michael Surtees.
From their web site:
“The exhibition’s annotated timeline serves as a cross-section, tracking the progression, upheavals, and transformations of the magazines. A selection of original magazines surveys the variety of unique formats, re-introducing rare examples from private collections, and is supplemented by complete facsimiles for visitors to browse. Audio interviews with editors and designers of these publications punctuate the room, with transcriptions appearing in the Storefront’s newsletter. In addition, many of these editors and designers have been invited to respond to the exhibition through the series Little Magazines / Small Talks held at the gallery. An implicit aim of the exhibition is to invite reflection on contemporary uses of media in architecture. Assembling all these remarkable documents for the first time offers a unique view of a key period of architectural innovation and challenges today’s architects to provoke a similar intensity.”
Rueben Rude’s Booty is only $120!
Buff Monster has some nice art for sale at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles. Checkout the available art—there’s some real doosies.
Keith Shore has a show coming up in February at Bucheon Gallery in San Francisco.
Oakland based artist Deth Sun has a show at Gallery 1988 in LA. If you haven’t seen his shit, check it out here.
From his site:
“I’m from California. I grew up all over Southern California, and graduated high school in San Diego. I lived in the Bay Area for 7 years, and I spent most of that time in Oakland, where I received my BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Painting and Drawing in 2002. I got a lot of scholarships but still ended up with a lot debt.
I paint, draw, and sometimes illustrate for other people (mostly giving permission for drawings for t-shirts, covers, ect). I should seek out more of those jobs, but I don’t really know if I like them.
I don’t have any career objectives and I don’t really know what I want to do with my work. I think it’s cause I’m 26. I want to make honest work. I think about this a lot.
For now, till hopefully February, I live in Los Angeles, California, where I sit in my house with two cats, painting, and missing my friends.”