Monday, February 11, 2008

One Way or Another Asian American Art Now

That's Kaz Oshiro, who used to work for Anime Jungle in Little Tokyo. He's standing next to some cabinets, and they look like the place where you'd put your dishes and cups, but alas, they aren't real. They're paintings. How is that you ask? Easy. They're layer upon layer of geso, so thick that they've smoothed out the canvas and have become thick and shiny like a formica surface. He's part of the One Way or Another Asian American Art Now at the Japanese American National Museum which just opened up this weekend in LA. Using upstairs and down, this show features work from an array of artists who are the up and comers of fine art, sometimes weird art across the country. This is the second stop of a touring art exhibition.

No don't dump trash in there! It doesn't work, but it looks real.

Here too. See the back? It's a canvas, but from the front, it looks like a mini fridge.


Won't be makin' bacon no more.

Glenn Kaino's taxidermy takes pieces of stuffed flesh and is put back together like patchwork.



Ala Ebtekar mixes hip hop and sneaker culture with an Iranian Coffee joint.

Even the sketchbooks have traditional patterns.



Michael Arcega's ark. Inside were different kinds of meat.

Xavier Cha as featured in a past GR issue, way back for her topiary tagging.


Weezer had a song about sweaters. These are sweaters all over the walls and the string linking them together.

ceo Akemi and curator Karen H. Karen did a talk and said you should feel challenged. I did at some points, and I guess that means I'm on the right track.

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6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What kind of meat is inside Arcega's ark? Packaged like those Boar's head meats?

6:11 AM  
Blogger Ken said...

Kaz is amazing. So is Xavier.

8:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

seriously. What kind of meat? Is it fake meat? Like more wooden pieces looking like meat? I'll try to google it

5:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the meats are jerky of all kinds. beef, pork, seahorse, lizard, tuna, etc... lots of jerky... mmmmmmm....

11:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

couple of notes: this is actually the third stop on the whistletour- the show started in NY, then came to Berkeley, and is now in LA. Onwards to Honolulu.

The other thing I learned from Karin Higa when I went to her guided tour at the Berkeley Art Museum was that several of the installations are radically different from show to show (site specific). What you see isn't necessarily what you got at the previous location.

Lastly, the meats appeared to be (two of each) dried animal parts used in chinese medicine. Thus, the animals board two by two, dehydrated style.

11:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you chanami and anonymous. I couldn't find it through google.

9:22 PM  

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