Takashi Okzaki, Afro Samurai, Film Still
JAPANESE CONTEMPORARY ART MANGA ANIME
KRAZY! The delirious world of Anime, Manga and Video Games March – June 14 2009 New York
The influence of these three forms of Japanese contemporary art and popular culture has been sweeping across Asia and around the world. This unique traveling survey of contemporary Japanese culture was organised by Vancouver Art Gallery.
“The Vancouver Art Gallery is committed to fostering new and dynamic understandings of visual culture. With the exhibition KRAZY!, we seized a tremendous opportunity to forward the study of some of the world’s fastest growing art forms,” said Kathleen Bartels, director of the Vancouver Art Gallery. “Despite the pervasive presence of these media, little has been done to assess the ties that bind them. By offering an interdisciplinary account in a major survey exhibition for the first time, we will illuminate their importance as a sustained cultural force.”
From the Japan Society website:
KRAZY! will be New York’s first major show dedicated to the Japanese phenomenon of Anime, Manga, and Video Games-three forms of contemporary visual art that are exercising a huge influence on an entire generation of American youth.
The exhibition, organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery, will be presented in an environment designed by cutting-edge architectural practice Atelier Bow-Wow, featuring life-size blowups of popular figures from the worlds of anime and manga within an intriguing sequence of spaces that evoke Tokyo’s clamorous cityscape.
Co-curated by leading North American and Japanese specialists, KRAZY! will give visitors a direct experience of new forms of cultural production and offers fresh insight into the interdependence of three art forms of the future.
Source: Japan Society website
- Event details
- Video – Brief trailer describing how visitors can interact with the show – 6 movie theatres, a sound room, games consoles etc.
- Krazy! Cosplay party event details March 28 2009 – dress up as characters
Artists:
Anime:
Ichiro Itano (Super Dimension Fortress Macross), Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf’s Rain), Satoshi Kon (Paprika), Mamoru Oshii (Patlabor 2: The Movie), Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), Makoto Shinkai (The Place Promised in Our Early Days), and Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game).
Manga:
Moyoco Anno (Sakuran), Hisashi Eguchi (Stop!! Hibari-kun!), Taiyo Matsumoto (Tekkon Kinkreet: Black & White), Junko Mizuno (Pure Trance), Mamoru Nagano (The Five Star Stories), Hitoshi Odajima (Mu: For Sale), Takashi Okazaki (Afro Samurai), and Yuichi Yokoyama (New Engineering).
Video Games:
Toru Iwatani (Pac-Man) and Shigeru Miyamoto (Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker)
Review links:
- Popcultureshock.com – appears to be full press release for original Vancouver show May 2008, details of exhibits which have ‘shaped the history of contemporary visual culture’ and bios of 7 participating curators
- Anime Today – preview of New York show, listen to Joe Earle director of Japan Society talk about it
- Krazy! at Vancouver Art Gallery stretches visual vocabulary – May 2008 – Straight.com – comment on cross over of high art and pop culture, interviews Vancouver Art Gallery about their art mandate and how this show fits within it
- Canadian Art – May 2008 – asks ‘is it art?’, information about artworks and several images
Click to buy catalogue of show
Related posts:
- Takashi Murakami on why the War helped create Japanese pop culture Dec 2008
- Survey of Japanese photography at Paris Photo Nov 2008
- Takashi Murakami’s one-of-a-kind art fair grows in size Sep 2008
- World’s first show of bamboo sculpture in New York Sep 2008
- Chinese Cosplay artist Cao Fei is one to watch Sep 2008
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