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.
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 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.
On view as of yesterday, Galerie Perrotin is exhibiting Japanese artist Makoto Aida's first major exhibition in Hong Kong. The show presents some of his most well-known artwork, in addition to experimental new pieces with the loose theme of metamorphosis. There are different interpretations of the world's changes in recent years, from politics to global warming. At the center of it all is his new sculpture "Space Tripper 1455" (lovingly called "Comet-chan"). See more after the jump!
Japanese artist known as Mr., a member of Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki collective, earned worldwide attention by directing the music video for Pharrell Williams' "It Girl". His vibrant, Pop Art-inspired paintings of Anime characters and graffiti elements have been likened to "the display in one's dirty bedroom." On November 22nd, Seattle Museum of Art's Asian Art Museum will present his first major museum retrospective in the United States. As a full retrospective of Mr.'s career, the exhibit will include his early paintings and drawings, and film work, to a new series of paintings created for the show.
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.