Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Junko Mizuno Tells the Story of Her Three Favorite Characters in “TRIAD”

Japanese born, San Francisco based artist Junko Mizuno (featured on the cover of HF Vol. 23) has a penchant for sweetly demonic characters. Her colorful paintings, drawings and graphic novels feature witch-like goddesses, sexy over-eating vixens, and fairytale-inspired girls with badass magical powers. Among them all, Junko Mizuno has her three favorites: a witch, a nurse, and a wrestler. The trio makes up the starring characters in her latest exhibition "TRIAD", opening tonight at Cotton Candy Machine Gallery in Brooklyn, which is closing its doors at the end of this year.

Japanese born, San Francisco based artist Junko Mizuno (featured on the cover of HF Vol. 23) has a penchant for sweetly demonic characters. Her colorful paintings, drawings and graphic novels feature witch-like goddesses, sexy over-eating vixens, and fairytale-inspired girls with badass magical powers. Among them all, Junko Mizuno has her three favorites: a witch, a nurse, and a wrestler. The trio makes up the starring characters in her latest exhibition “TRIAD”, opening tonight at Cotton Candy Machine Gallery in Brooklyn, which is closing its doors at the end of this year. Throughout her works are traces of her comic books, such as Pure Trance, and influences from the “father of Manga” Osamu Tezuka and Japanese animation films like Akira. Her ultra-cute with dirty and grotesque imagery mashes up futuristic and primitive themes. “TRIAD” takes place in the future, where we find her trio living together in a fancy mansion. They go about their day, feeding their hungry children with bare-breasted fountains of milk, sleeping in their beds, fantasizing about wild adventures and surgical experiments. Meanwhile, the world outside is about to be invaded by a race of sexy female aliens. If you sense a new Junko Mizuno comic in the works, so do we.

Take a look at more works from “TRIAD”, below, opening tonight at Cotton Candy Machine Gallery in Brooklyn, and running through November 29th, 2015.


detail


detail


detail

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Japanese artist Shintaro Ohata places sculptures in front of paintings to create wondrous scenes inspired by childhood. They play out every day encounters between his child subjects, their pets and imaginary friends with the world around them. While their lives may seem ordinary for the most part, Ohata's playful and impressionistic style make them feel like fantasies. They are sculpted from polystyrene which are then painted to perfectly match their traditional 2D acrylic backgrounds.
This Sunday (June 30) at 2 p.m.-4 p.m., the Hi-Fructose MICRO Mega Store will host a signing of acclaimed artist and illustrator Junko Mizuno. As a special treat, these beautiful silk screened test prints on wood (that sparkle with glitter) will be available. Each of these prints are unique and quantities are limited. You will also find Junko’s new coloring book, copies of her latest manga books, her totally awesome Triad pop-up book, rare copies of HF 23 (she’s on the cover), and unique items she will be bringing from her personal archives.
Artist duo Gosha Levochkin and Devin Liston have made a name for themselves as DevNgosha, combining their backgrounds in illustration and fine art. Years after their first collaboration, Soze Gallery is showcasing their individual talents in side by side solos "GROWN UPS" and "LOST" (previewed here). As collaborators, they've come up with a system of working together and creating, where one starts a piece and the other finishes it, and vice versa. Now abandoning that system, we can see Liston and Gosha are artists who like to play with varying aesthetics.
The sparkling and sweet demeanor of Japanese artist Hikari Shimoda's child subjects is equally enchanting and disarming, and full of possibilities. Born and currently based in Nagano, Japan, but raised on Japanese animation and comics, Hikari herself is not unlike her characters, living on the edge between a place deeply rooted in its beliefs and traditions and an exciting, however uncertain, future. First featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 29, and also on our blog, her works in recent years have been deeply impacted by the Great East Japan Earthquake, created from the perspective of a young artist living in the countryside, where social media and the books she reads are her main portal to the outside world.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List