May 11 @ tokyo big sight: GEISAI MUSEUM 2
Geisai is an art-industry convention. Aspiring painters show their works and gallery owners come around and many business cards are exchanged. It is produced by TAKASHI MURAKAMI, the famous pop-art guy from the '90s. I guess maybe becuase he is famous, half of the exhibiton space of GEISAI is turned into a million-dollar stage with huge hi-tech lightshows and pop-idol performances, b-list celebrity talk-shows, which drone on throughout the event. At first I was pissed off because I paid for a room full of art and only got half-a-room full of art. But in the end, 6 hours was barely enough to see everything in the half-a-room!!
GENERAL THEMES: there are three that I, with my anyone-can-get-one B.A. in graphic design, could see:
- mandalas! either intentionally invoking Bhuddism, or unintentionally - by having 4-way symmetry and crazy detail.
- obsessive illustration! shapes that look simple from far away but up close are made from a million tiny ballpoint-pen lines.
- ripping off other artists! there were at least 4 clusters of artists present who all had the same style: several Goreys, several Maruos, and a bunch of Ukio-E.
- this is harder to articulate, but there were several people doing a theme of MODERN GHOSTS. like the idea that the old traditions, the old Shinto anamist spirits, the old ways are not gone, they are invisibly co-existing with our modern plastic lives. They might be under the concrete sidewalk or behind your vynyl Doraemon sippy cup.
- A kind of very vague, insubstantial, yet clearly-drawn and well-shaded, floaty stuff. Where does that trend come from? I have no idea if people here even LIKE that, or if that is just a by-product of a university art education, like soulless technique.
Anyway, most of these people have websites, so i'll just put up pictures and links.
He makes these life-sized American Horror Movie Monster collages : Freddy, Jason, etc. -- all collaged out of pics of candy and Faberge eggs!
Masahiro Teramoto! no website.
teramoto is a fun guy, He did simple paintings of genitals, but his major artwork is his hair. If you walk around Tokyo long enough you will see his afro.
He said his paintings were done using a special technique: dripping paint on, and then sanding most of it off, to create the round, cellular shapes you see above. He said this is an old technique but deeeeyamn. This painting is around "seven or 8 layers" of dripped-and-sanded paint.
???????????????????? MOTOHIRO
Nitsumaki Hayato. (no site)
Mr. Nitsumaki is one of around 3 painters at this event doing Gorey-inspired art. Nitsumaki's special point, though, is how he distorts facial features.
Teruaki Fuchisawa
Teruaki does these insanely-detailed pen-and-ink illustrations. close-up below:
There are a lot of people doing this kind of thing in Japan. The whole "negative-space" thing is HELLA Japanese. check out the photo above: you see all the white space? japanese artists in ALL GENRES like doing that. plus it allows you to have a pleasing shape to look at from accross the room, and when you get up close you can also admire the details.
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This guy, whose name i forgot LIKE A DOUCHE, did all these traditional Buddha - meets- hard-gay-rapper-gangstuh paintings with these nuclear-glowing colors.
Takahashi Hiroe
I really like takahashi's stuff because it is BOTH mandala-like AND obsessively-detailed illustrated.
About half of Pinkman's paintings were covers of a fictional gay magazine called BUTT.
YUCKE
Masayoshi Onozato
At first Masayoshi's work looked too similar to those expensive vynyl toys from - kaKIDROBOTws or whatever -
but the dude is so good at what he does! he had a mural like 10 feet long full of 1,000 tiny characters:
. . . plus sketchbooks full of millions of obsessive doodles.
This is (above) a page from an english textbook he wants to someday publish . . . someone help him!
Ohtani Yuki.
Ohtani does not have a website, but his mixi ID is : 2512198
below, more details:
BAMUSE is an art company whose main artist is Keisuke KAtaoka
Keisuke does millions of these Heavy-Metal Magazine-lookin' robot sea-creatures.
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This is the LEAST vaginal bas-relief that this person did.
. . . . . . . . . . . . 
Adobe Illustrator versions of old-school samurai myths.
Ms. Nogi takes photos using a kalidescope filter, then prints them and paints weird bukkake splotches over them, and THEN paints faces on the splotches.
Hiromi graduated from art school in NYC, and is producing massive amounts of these faces (note the Hello Kitty bow!).
For those who want to spend more, she is now working on a NEW series - same concept but larger size. She was afraid that the concept was too Pop-art Warhol. . .more specifically that it was too Western. So to solve this problem , she drew a Japanese style mandala-ish illustration, featuring various traditional symbols of femininity, and used that as a transparent overlay on this series. So what you are seeing is a distortion of not one, but TWO underlying layers : the cartoony face, and the Japanese-style mandala.
Since this new series is about 60cm high, i told her she should use it as a backdrop for Pachinko! i mean, can you imagine?
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Ms. Nichi does elaborately staged, costume-driven photos, sort of like Cindy Sherman. The picture above , she said, was a study in contrasts: the left picture is radiating outwards like BOOSH, and the right one is all compressed inwards. and yet, the outwards-facing one is very calm (blue) where the inwards-facing one is all raging (red).
Mr. Jidai
Žž‘ã
He is an Adobe Illustrator genius, but still no website. This painting was an update of a famous old Ukio-E painter who hid pictures in other pictures. in this case, Teriyaki-san hid smaller cats inside the cat head. Here is something really really Japanese : instead of a) being ashamed to be caught copying someone, or
b) obnoxiously claiming some post-modern irony like, "Oh i am not ripping him off, i am APPROPRIATING"
Teriyaki took a third route, unthinkable to a Western fine-artist: he brought a book of the famous old Ukio-e painter and whipped it out to show me. "See? Isn't this guy great?" I am no anthropologist but i think that if I could understand this response, I could understand a lot about japan in general - maybe even the rappers.
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This genius painted porno images, inside plexiglass boxes. the lower half of the box was half-full of shredded porn!
Aside from having a very clean, flat style which i like, her paintings depict people's desire to escape from contemporary life: here a salariman getting scolded in the office nods and smiles, while his mind is on vacation.
ok, this is too big for one page. please venture on to part two!!!
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