“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

Nara is getting a little played out now, but he’s one of our favorite Japanese artists. Nara has a show in Korea. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop on by.

Buy Aya Takano postcards from Sweatyfrog.

—one of Murakami’s folks.

The Birth of the Giant Zombie, 2001
32 3/8×88 5/8 inches, digital print

If you’re in New York in the near future, you have to check out “Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture” at the Japan Society. Also pick up the Sunday New York Times Magazine for a bunch of great articles on Japan—specifically one on Takashi Murakami. Tomio Koyama, Murakami’s art dealer says, “In Japan, a gallery has no meaning, and a Louis Vuitton shop is more powerful place to see something.” The Murakami line for Louis Vuitton has reported sales of around $300 million. Murakami has the distinction of having the highest priced contemporary art piece (Japan)—$567,500 at an auction in 2003 in Chicago.


Related links:—Audio interview
—Little Boy: Japan’s Exploding Subculture (Amazon)
—NY Times article: Eat, Memory: Our Lady of Lawson

Tadasu Takamine and his lovely assistant shared a room with a huge clay face for eighteen consecutive days. Before the eye of the camera, they ate, slept, read, had sex and made continuous changes to the face, animating it to keep time with a scratchy, halting recording of that American patriotic classic “God Bless America.” (2002, 9 minute DVD). In the video Inertia (1998), Takamine and Iwasaki explores the science of inertia by placing a young woman on top of a bullet train, with a skirt on. Does anyone know where I can get a hold of these videos?


The official story:

“ICON OF TECHNOLOGY” (EXHIBITION CATALOG “DONAI YANEN!”, 1998)

The Shinkansen has been for a long time the technologies’ showcase of Modern Japan. This supertrain project was initiated in 1959 when the international Olympic committee selected Tokyo as the venue for the 1964 Olympics. In this golden age of the Nippon economy, the preparation for the games corresponded for Japanese people in particular to the affirmation of their new economic power doubled by the international recognition that had been so much anticipated. Being very proud, the capital and the whole county turned into an incredible construction site, from where emerged expressways elevated roads, spacious avenues replacing demolished meshes of small alleys and concrete tours forming barriers between the flood of cars and small traditional houses suspending a sentence. Without caring for the peripheral inhabitants, the authorities and the public utility corporations broke a way on the axis Tokyo-Osaka to lay the railroad track for the future train, that literally bled the countryside without compensation: the progress had no price and a heart insusceptible to pity. Today, losing the lead to the French TGV by a short head, the Shinkansen has been still a symbol for the people who travel well around their country. It is why Iwasaki and Takamine chose this icon of technology in order to conceive their first work in common. They are both devoted to new technologies and synthetic images, yet the procedure of their video installation is minimal and realist. They fixed a video camera on the exterior of the motive car of the train Nagoya-Tokyo and kept it running throughout the 2 hours’ journey. Absurd project, which would be nothing but muffled thump and fuzzy images because of such a speed that makes the reading of the landscape impossible at all: the departure from the city Nagoya, tea plantation, the Mt. Fuji, the arrival at Tokyo, none is granted to see… In 1896, the brothers Lumiere had invented the cinematography, shooting a moving train in fix plan. It was “the arrival of the train entering the station of the Ciotat”. A century later, two young Japanese artists demonstrate the contrary to this principal of reality: it must be immobile in order to restore the speed.