1/24/2007

Misaki Kawai

31 comments:

Painter said...

Misaki Kawai @
Clementine
623 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Sven said...

some heavy hitting shit right here

zipthwung said...

Yeah. I posted the "kawai" sensibility. I gather the Japanese have as many sensibilities as the eskimo have words for snow, which is only one, just like here - unless you count words like drizzle and mist.

But this show was kawaii. I dont know if it was pure kawaii or if it was funny - the cuteness was cute but the cute got in the way of the funny. Thats why I hate kawaii. Like Shonen Knife has no peas, edge or honey. I like my honeys.

zipthwung said...

Aksio - a friend pointed out about manga - its largely drawn by men, many of whom are old. They draw school girls. School girls like it. Kids in america watch it, then go to conventions - theres Kaiju Big Battel and stuff.

And its all because some old fart likes making bukake drawings or whatever.
Yep, theres a seedy underside to this, and I hope no one is fooled.

zipthwung said...

Context:

kawaii

rainbowandskull said...

Now this is what I am talking about. This show is fun and looks like the artist had a good time making it as well.

Martin said...

this image for me is more south park than manga or kawaii stuff... and the stuff on the website calls to mind howard finster, chris johanson, and donald baechler. sorry, i think it is a bit shallow to start talking about manga and kawaii here.

i am into all of these textures, collage, and strong colors... all of the action.

ad3pt said...

this belongs in the comics section of the sunday paper. next painting please.

zipthwung said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
zipthwung said...

You are right - NERD!!!!! You know what nerd is in Japanese? Otaku! I went to the Japan society to learn that. Lost ten fukin' bucks to look at a few dojinshi turds on dedestals. What a waste of time.
Little nerd boys should stay home with their moms.

Save your money and go look at hentai on the internets. Hells yeah!!!

zipthwung said...

I went to tokyo during the dot com bubble with some buddies and we found a panty vending machine. Fukin a! I wish I'd bought a pair to wrap oround your head devinlevin. You know "if you cant get a date, make a date!".

zipthwung said...

the sleep of adults breeds children

Same pathology. Ive seen several like this but this is the most ambitious.

zipthwung said...

If this artist was indoctrinated by the whitney program she could say something derivative like "investigation exploring the relationships between fantasies of imperial power and imagined utopian configurations of race, class, and gender. "

Why not add something about fuzzy kittens?
TKO!!!
No place like utopia.

Anonymous said...

I read this word from another blog. And I think it's a really good word. It applies here, though the context is a bit different.

Adj. 1. nimble - moving quickly and lightly; "sleek and agile as a gymnast"; "as nimble as a deer"; "nimble fingers"; "quick of foot"; "the old dog was so spry it was halfway up the stairs before we could stop it"
agile, spry, quick
active - characterized by energetic activity; "an active toddler"; "active as a gazelle"; "an active man is a man of action"
2. nimble - mentally quick; "an agile mind"; "nimble wits"
agile
intelligent - having the capacity for thought and reason especially to a high degree; "is there intelligent life in the universe?"; "an intelligent question"


Nippon Chick -- there is something soft feminism in here: Best thing are the blues shooting, or are they bouncing, to the same sound as the wobbling thighs. Ultra-thighs: You have to love them! Spare, speed, and economical! It's the philosophy--bouncing all the same.
This sort of art has had a great influence on this western mind.

Tatiana said...

im too drunk to comment right now

Anonymous said...

here's what a real artist looks like take a look zip, et al.

kunstler.com

Anonymous said...

he must be updating his site at the moment, the link will work in a bit

zipthwung said...

thanks derix - ive been meaning to read that (used the wayback machine...RAD!!!!) along with the somewhat innacurate "City of QUartz" - I found W.S. Trow "in the context of no context" who died recently, in a bookstore. He gets referenced more than once, which makes my astute purchase of the book a feather in my intellectual cap. and I wonder what his place in the symbolic order is (as an outsider, outside of everything). I lost my copy, I can feel it....

Its not a great book but it does describe the collapse of old school (he wrote for the NYrKr) and talks about ironic t-shirts and in a way, Spy magazine which is where Im at right now, creatively (and apparently the rest of the art world). Im not into making art for history because then Id have to remember the past and I have trouble enough studying for the future.

zipthwung said...

oh and I bought some jameson, and they gave me some jameson coasters, so Im going with Jameson and Ginger.
Let us toast the third reich and the coming war with Iran!
Crusaders are you with me?

Max said...

Scree! Check out Lorenzo De Los Angeles at D. Eller while you are in the neighborhood... my favorite show of the year ! (so far)

Anonymous said...

crunk & insoucient

Anonymous said...

Carol we all manage different super heros, here we see all sorts of notions deflated. Derix is right, Kawaii san is more just recording impressions, most typically, stuff you'd pay little attention to in the homeland, though appear quite unusual to the newly becoming. In short, it's someone's take on a different culture: mixed in is an intigue, fascination, and a kind of weird set of 'other' rules set to an exhibition as visual documentation and expression.

FLIP

RIIKO SAKKINEN
"I like things I don't understand," says Finnish artist Riiko Sakkinen--which should have made his past three months in Japan a blast.

Looking at one of his Tokyo creations, I tell him that the katakana script appears to be the price list for a hairdresser. But when he says he copied it off a board in the red light district of Shinjuku, Tokyo, I start to wonder if the menu items aren't euphemisms for something else altogether.

The more I look, the less certain I am, and that seems to suit Sakkinen just fine.


It's intriguing, isn't it, an outside view, even when it doesn't satisfy inside expectations.

zipthwung said...

Leviathon flesh frished hailly!/ book braided with windows- gars and tripes! Lookeee- a-
Balto was his name-o! hack bland beached brail bore!
Smelly is the feast!

Or something like that.

zipthwung said...

Interogation
investigation
Conflation
Intersection
Erasure
Blur

Wooohoo.

amy boras said...

i like those blue diamond men.

Unknown said...

ZIPTHWUNG

where do you get the manga connection from this picture?

is it because her name sounds japanese and you project your singular stereotype onto anything that has an ethnic sounding name?

or are you just retarded? http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html

speaking of nerds, who is the one posting random frank herbert quotes on this board? To me, that is the epitome of nerd.

Mark Barry said...

Saw this today and the South Park refference is right on, I wasn't moved by it.

Anonymous said...

The world in your work is very irreverent and childlike. Without meaning to put labels on it, I can't help but thing of it as being "kawaii (cute) with attitude". What do you think about Japan's "kawaii" culture?

Everything has a balance of good and bad to it: for example, Hetauma (a graphic design style or trend that can be translated as "clumsy skill") for me is 'bad, but good'. I think most of Japan's "kawaii" culture is just cute; it's very easy for people to like what comes out of it. I don't find anything particularly shocking in it. But when something looks cute but has a funny or weird aspect to it, I think it's really special. That kind of cuteness has a very strong character.

ok?

Anonymous said...

zipthwung yur a arrogent loudmouth----intellectual noise chatter-ya probably dont know how to use yur body---misaki did a great show! the best on that row of galleries----some real beautiful stuff--of coure it has its sources frum many places ---art-brute and that ugly beauty style . I think king terry designed her last show poster in japan - a tribute to her connection to Hetauma.Again zipthwung must make crappy work while mumbling all those 10$ words-----go write for peter halley!

zipthwung said...

10$ words like kawaii?

Like I said the cuteness gets in the way of the weird. Why not go weird? Because its not so easy.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-H.S.T.

Its not weird enough.

zipthwung said...

oh and its not a bad show, for the record.