Spoon & Tamago

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Rough draft sketches turned into actual furniture by Daigo Fukawa

all images courtesy daigo fukawa

I’ve been going through a lot of student work this week (see it all here) and one of my favorites is this clever set of furniture that looks like rough sketches suddenly came to life. It’s enough to make you do a double-take, or to assume they’re just renderings. The collection, appropriately titled “rough sketch products” was created by art student Daigo Fukawa for his 2013 senior thesis exhibition at Tokyo University of the Arts.

I’m not sure how comfortable these pieces are, but in terms of bringing ideas to life (quite literally) Daigo Fukawa takes the cake.

X-Ray Portraits of Couples by Saiko Kanda and Mayuka Hayashi

November 26, 2013 / Johnny / 9 Comments

photos courtesy mitsubishi chemical junior designer award and the artists

What should have been warm, fuzzy photos of couples are drastically transformed into stark, rather eerie portraits by Saiko Kanda and Mayuka Hayashi. Using an actual CT scan and x-ray machine, the students artists photographed 4 couples, removing the everyday information that we typically perceive. But surprisingly what is revealed is something more than what we would see in a doctor’s office.

“X-ray images usually show the finite nature of our bodies composed only of matter,” say the duo. “But these couples portraits reveal a pulse that isn’t normally seen.” Romantic? No. Intimate? Absolutely.

Kanda and Hayashi conceived the body of work for their senior thesis exhibition at Musashino Art University. They went on to win a prize in the recent Mitsubishi Chemical Junior Designer Award.

[correction] an earlier version of this post mistakenly reported the artist’s name as Ayako Kanda. The correct name is Saiko Kanda.

source: Mitsubishi Chemical Junior Designer Award

Tracing Acton | Minami Arai on the lost art of the written word

November 25, 2013 / Johnny / Comments Off

all photos courtesy Mitsubishi Chemical Junior Designer Award and the artist

In a fascinating installation, artist and student Minami Arai uses books and wires to illuminate the lost art of the written word. “Before typewriters there was the written word,” says Arai in a statement. “The text would trace the action of writing , offering glimpses of the author’s personality current state of mind.”

In “Tracing Action” Arai uses thick wire and to recreate an elevated text from her favorite books. It’s as if the text is rising off the page and being brought to life.

The installation was part of Arai’s graduating thesis show at Musashino Art University. It then went on to win an award in the Mitsubishi Chemical Junior Designer Award, which celebrates the work of student artists. You can see all our previous coverage of the awards HERE.

Arai even goes as far as to adjust the depth of edits made after the original writing to illustrate the passage of time.

source: Mitsubishi Chemical Junior Designer Award

Delusion Mapping Project by Takayuki Fukusawa

November 23, 2013 / Johnny / Comments Off

Japanese designer Takayuki Fukasawa has created “Delusion Mapping Project,” a series of t-shirts with hyper-realistic prints that create the illusion of peering through a woman’s clothes. Here’s Fukusawa describing his work:

This art project utilizes a unique method to bring to life the world of delusion that people secretly envision.
How will people react when the world that’s inside their heads are laid bare before their eyes?

His t-shirts were presented at Ouchi Gallery, where he commented that “in Tokyo, looking at the chest area is a faux-pas! People turn their heads when they see the shirts.”

Layered Resin Goldfish | Riusuke Fukahori at Joshua Liner

November 20, 2013 / Johnny / 1 Comment

all images courtesy Joshua Liner Gallery

Finishing off our top picks of Japanese artists showing in New York this fall is Riusuke Fukahori. The 40-year old Yokohama-based artist will be making his debut solo exhibition in New York alongside his single obsession: goldfish.

Fukahori’s goldfish are not real, but can easily be mistaken for a living animal. Instead, the creations emerge and come to life from an incredibly meticulous process of layer after layer of paint, each separated – and held in place – by a single thin layer of resin.

Riusuke Fukahori: The Painted Breath
Joshua Liner, New York
11.21.13 – 01.18.14

If you want to learn more about the artist, this is what we wrote when we covered his work last year:

The goldfish holds a very special place in the heart of any child who’s ever been to a matsuri (street festival) in Japan. Kingyo-sukui is the game of “goldfish scooping” and is a staple of any summer street festival, along with the masks, water balloon yo-yos, fireworks and yummy food.

But for artist Riusuke Fukahori, the goldfish was not just a relic of long-lost childhood. As he painfully lay in his room one night, struggling and suffering, about to give up on his art, he looked over and saw a goldfish. His neglected fish of 7 years sputtered about in a cesspool of mold and feces – a common fate endured by most festival souvenirs.

Fukahori felt a shiver run down his spine. What he suddenly saw was a beautiful animal, glowing in bright red, living and surviving. The artist pulled out his paint and set to work, immediately triggering some sort of chemical reaction in his brain. Fukahori had looked far and wide – in Europe, the U.S. and Japan – for his muse. But in an instantaneous form of enlightenment he knew that all along it was right there in his room, inside that dirty fish tank. The goldfish, writes Fukahori, was my salvation.

source: press release

Nudes Like You’ve Never Seen Before | Shinichi Maruyama at Bruce Silverstein

November 20, 2013 / Johnny / 2 Comments

Continuing on with picks for this season’s NY gallery openings is Shinichi Maruyama (previously), who photographs nudes like you’ve never seen them before. The Japanese artist, who is showing at Bruce Silverstein, points his camera at nude dancers, capturing thousands of individual frames. Each frame is then layered on top of one another, creating a sculptural composite image “that contradict the notion of a photograph as a single moment of stopped time.”

The inspiration comes from Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (1912). “I tried to capture the beauty of both the human body’s figure and its motion,” says Maruyama. “By putting together uninterrupted individual moments, the resulting image as a whole will appear to be something different from what actually exists.”

Shinichi Maruyama: Nudes
Bruce Silverstein, New York
11.07.13 – 12.21.13
(special performance by choreographer Jessica Lang on Thursday Nov. 21, 7PM)

Mirrored Infinity Room | Yayoi Kusama at David Zwirner

November 20, 2013 / Johnny / 2 Comments

unless otherwise noted, all photos courtesy David Zwirner

Today we’re going to be rounding up a few picks of Japanese artists showing in New York this fall season. Our first pick is Yayoi Kusama, who recently joined David Zwirner Gallery and is now really rubbing it in to her ex-gallerist Gagosian. In what is promising to be the next Rain Room (ie: long lines and obligatory instagram selfies) eccentric artist Yayoi Kusama is showcasing a monumental body of new and recent work. Headlining the show “I Who Have Arrived In Heaven” is Kusama’s immersive mirrored infinity room, which features a surrealistic dark room of mirrors, LED lights and water. As of now we’re hearing that the wait to get in is 2 hours and there is a time limit of 40 seconds to spend in the room.

Yayoi Kusama: I who have arrived in heaven
David Zwirner, New York
11.08.2013 – 12.21.2013

Also on display are Kusama’s colorful dot sculptures and paintings.

source: mymodernmet | David Zwirner

Torii Rings Turn Your Finger Into Sacred Land

November 19, 2013 / Johnny / 1 Comment

Kansai-based crafter Matsuko Matsui creates small, delicate accessories from materials like wood, metal and glass. Among her many creations, which she catalogs on her blog, my favorite are these rings inspired by tori, a traditional Japanese gate often found at the entrance of a Shinto shrine. They can be found all across Japan symbolically delineating between sacred and non-sacred land.

“What I’d really like,” Matsui writes jokingly on her blog, “is for people to buy multiples and turn their finger into a Kyoto tori tunnel.” She is undoubtedly referring to something you would see at Fushimi Inari Taisha.

You can check out our other jewelry-themed posts right here!

Source: matomeno

Internet Cats are Reborn as Embroideries Peeking Out of Shirts

November 19, 2013 / Johnny / 4 Comments

They say cats have 9 lives. Well Internet cats now have 1 additional life, thanks to embroidery artist Hiroko Kubota. The Nara-based artist began creating clothes as a hobby, mainly for her family. “My son was of a smaller build and store-bought clothes wouldn’t fit him well so I would often make him clothes,” explains Kubota. “It was actually at his request that I began embroidering cats.”

As it turns out, Kubota’s son is somewhat of a cat fanatic and enjoys collecting images of cute cats he finds on the Internet. His favorite ones would become models for embroideries.

After posting her creations online they quickly went viral (like most Internet cats do), prompting Kubota to open an etsy shop 6 months ago. Despite the hefty price tag for a shirt ($250 – $300) she quickly racked up 15 sales and her current inventory is looking a bit slim. According to her website she also used to do custom orders. But now that she seems to be getting busier that service may be in jeopardy.

Update: Kubota has released a book about her hand-embroidered cats called neko shirt.

*All quotes translated from Japanese to English by author

H/T @colossal

Mao, Lenin, Thoreau and Marx go canoeing together

November 18, 2013 / Johnny / 1 Comment

Continuing their bizarre foray into the untapped market of philosopher/socio-political theorist action figures, Japanese company Mountain Research has released a 2013 edition of Chairman Mao, Vladimir Lenin, Henry David Thoreau and Karl Marx. This year the anatomically correct action figures (scaled down to 1:22.5) can be seen paddling down a river. Thoreau is yelling orders at the communists to paddle. Marx and Mao are taking in the scenery, but the later seems much happier to be here than the former. The attention to detail , especially their belongings, is quite staggering.