Beyond Superflat: the anime influence
Christopher Y. Lew
While the publicity machine for Takashi Murakami’s "Little Brother" exhibition at Japan Society was on a steady roll, a quiet storm was brewing at Plum Blossoms in Chelsea. Under the curatorial direction of Tim Evans, "Psionic Distortion" brought together more than 30 artists–from Japan, Europe, and the U.S.–all of whom have all been influenced by manga. The exhibition, which traveled from the hip SuperDeluxe gallery in Tokyo, was a welcome, and slightly overwhelming, look at neo-pop, global cultural production.
Manga artist Shinataro Kago responds to sexual anxieties with his scatological drawings of school girls and salary men retching up worm-shaped objects from various orifices including their eyes, mouths, and nipples. They are painful reactions to invisible societal forces. The dreamy works by New York-based Kyung Jeon reminisce on childhood and adolescence. Naked and bare-chested girls play with elongated breasts, their own or their mothers’. Akino Kondoh’s compositions of seductive nymphets can also play with the representation of adolescent female forms. Kondoh draws female figures in negative–left uncolored, but fleshed out by the surrounding bloom of flowers, leaves, and butterfly wings. These ghostly beauties, with their bobbed hair and come-hither-eyes, resist simple categorization and interpretation.
Japanese artist and graphic design duo Regina produced layered works that reference subway car graffiti bombings and the signature twisting shapes of designer Ryan McGuiness. They look as good mounted on the wall as they would silk-screened on a t-shirt. Queens-based Toby Barnes presented a bright mountainous landscape with Voltron-like robots landing in the snow. His painting melds an idyllic Aspen vacation with the kinetic Saturday-morning cartoons of an 80s childhood.
Ujino Muneteru treated those present at the opening reception to a live performance, producing sounds from his Rube Goldberg contraption, a musical instrument-conglomerate consisting of guitars, a turntable, power drill, blender, and found records. Detroit-native Kenjji presented portraits of his kuro manga (Black manga) characters that mix hip hop and Haitian voodoo with Japanese comic book tradition. His Witch Doctor (2004) and other superheroes eschew the empty, action-packed stories of Marvel and DC comics and align themselves with more complex and realistic manga narratives.
While the exhibition deftly examines the dissemination of Japanese pop culture throughout the world and especially the U.S., it does so by highlighting the bold lines and graphic style these artists share–call it a homogenization of subcultures or simply trans-national influence. As New York is inundated once again by Murakami/Louis Vuitton handbag collaborations, "Psionic Distortion" proves there’s more depth to manga-inspired art that Superflat.
