Dan Harlow

The School Of Visual Arts in New York City, along with their Japanese alumni will be ending their multimedia exhibition today. Called ‘Super Phat‘, all 41 artists are Japanese and have created various works which refer to the slang word in the exhibitions title. The idea is to show American audiences how other cultures view us as well how our culture has been adopted and rewritten in the Japanese culture.

Below are some highlights.

What I find most striking about this exhibition is that many of the works juxtapose innocence with subtle violence and sarcasm. The photograph titled ‘Nu on the Street’ featuring a blue horse-type creature is funny in that you pretty much know anyone wearing a costume like that would really get the crap beaten out of them here in the US. That’s probably why you don’t see too many cosplayers running around in downtown urban America. Also the baby stroller with M-16 hardware built into it is a nice statement about Americans and our love affair with violence and war.

The best (in my opinion) is the painting titled ‘Butterfly’ because it seems to be making a subtle mockery of female American youth. The girl in the painting is a little overweight and her conformist butterfly tattoo and ‘whale tail’ is visible for anyone to look at. The fact that she is eating fruit is a really nice biblical reference in that she is like a modern Eve ready to “seduce” yet has become somewhat too disgusting and plain to pull it off. With her back to the viewer she appears to not even care about her appearance yet at the same time you can just feel how desperate she is for attention. The artist Ai Tatebayashi is a real talent here.

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