To The Masses by Beyond Marketing Group

scion presents

to the masses curated by Giant Robot

scion presents

to the masses curated by Giant Robot

August 25 - September 8 Scion Installation L.A. 3521 Helms Ave. (at National) Culver City, CA 90232 scion.com/space/ 310-815-8840

feric (USA) French (England) Caroline Hwang (USA) Olaf Ladousse (Spain) Dan-ah Kim (USA) Brian Ralph (USA) Eishi Takaoka (Japan) Ben Woodward (USA) Kohei Yamashita (Japan)

About the Show Giant Robot magazine presents To The Masses, an art exhibition that incorporates various themes in contemporary art and popular culture found in Giant Robot magazine, stores, and art galleries. Artists from the U.S. include Ben Woodward, Brian Ralph, Caroline Hwang, Dan-ah Kim, and feric. From Japan: Eishi Takaoka and Kohei Yamashita. Spain: Olaf Ladousse. And England: French (yes, that’s his name). This diverse group of artists delves into different mediums (screen printing, carving wood, pen-and-ink drawings, and more) and styles. Yet they share an indie spirit and are part of an underground cultural movement that spans the globe. Most can’t boast that they’ve shown in museums or have had a huge career in art thus far, but they have made a range of products stemming from their art, such as Olaf’s comics and zines, Kohei Yamashita’s many character-derived products, Brian Ralph’s screenprinted concert posters, and Caroline Hwang’s handmade purses. Not afraid to do the traditionally non-artist “thing” of blending art with products, many of the artists have become known across different mediums by a huge crosssection of people, giving them a wide reach and a “to the masses” appeal. This art exhibition features their ﬁne art, which, for most of the artists, is their primary focus.

Cover: feric. Inside cover: Dan-ah Kim. Opposite: Eishi Takaoka. Right: Carolyn Hwang.

feric Eric Feng, a.k.a. feric, is an emerging artist/conceptual designer based in New York. His illustrative style represents a surreal, beautiful blend of East and West, past and present, natural and mechanical. Hovering between fantasy and reality, interwoven with natural and mechanical beings, he hints at inďŹ nite evolutionary possibilities. Feng has garnered illustration awards from the AIGA, Communication Arts, Graphis, and American Illustration, plus animation awards from the Holland International Animation Festival, the Ottawa International Animation Festival and the NYEXPO Festival, among others. He has worked on various ďŹ lm, animation, and video-game projects.

French Aldershot is a part of the U.K. known for its army base–a good place to start an interest in torn body parts, I suppose. Filled with Aldershot pride, French moved to Brixton, London to further his career in depicting all things evil, grotesque, morbid, and Pagan. An obsession with metal music informs French’s work, which literally draws the line between the magniﬁcent and the repulsive. French’s sensitive and detailed linework shows the beauty in the revolting. And I mean revolting. - Joseph Allen

Caroline Hwang Caroline Hwang was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, grew up in Southern California, and earned her Bachelor’s Degree at Art Center College of Design. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York where she paints, stitches, prints, and dreams of the day she can bring her dogs to live with her. Hwang’s work is influenced as much by her grandmother’s crocheting and knitting as it is by crafts, graphic arts, quilting, films, and music–among other things. She collages fabric, thread, and paint to create images that communicate raw human emotion, reflection, and the dynamics and difficulty of all relationships. She has been featured in Paper Magazine and Swindle Quarterly and has done illustration work for The New York Times, Bust Magazine, and HOW Design. Her art has most recently been shown at Clementine Gallery (New York), New Image Gallery (Los Angeles), Motel Gallery (Portland) and 96 Gillespie (London).

Dan-ah Kim Dan-ah Kim was born in Seoul, Korea and moved frequently before arriving in Brooklyn to attend Pratt Institute. Since graduating with a BFA in Communications Design, the New York City-based artist has created whimsical, thoughtprovoking pieces, often featuring anonymous subjects with their faces turned away–unaware that a fleeting moment has been captured. She has shown with galleries in Los Angeles, Nashville, and NYC. Kim also spends time with the art departments of film sets and various illustration projects. Her film credits include independent features Half Nelson and West 32nd.

Olaf Ladousse Little is known about the life of Olaf Ladousse before he landed in Madrid in 1992. Suspected to be Belgian, French, or Albanian, his studies at Mexico University UNAM and the Parisian school of design “Les Ateliers” negate the possibility of an outer-space origin. Let’s say Olaf is Turkish from Cyprus. He entered illustration because it was impossible to ﬁnd a job as an industrial designer in Madrid. Then he began the mute, international, comic fanzine Qué Suerte and the all-girl, all-guitar, folk-core band, Las Solex. His political concerns are shown in his work with El Cartel, which he founded with Mutis, Eneko, Jaques le Biscuit, and César. The collective has been gluing self-published posters in the streets of Madrid since 1999. (They have been invited to do so in Turin, Italy and Porto Alegre, Brazil as well.) The same year, Olaf invented the “doorag,” a circuit-bended instrument that he plays with the LCDD band in workshops, concerts, and recording studios. In exhibitions, he often mixes his engraving, the bent sound of doorags, and posters.

Brian Ralph Brian Ralph graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996 with a BFA in Illustration. His graphic novel Cave-In was nominated for three Harveys and one Eisner Award, and was picked as one of the ďŹ ve best comics of 1999 by The Comics Journal. He won a Xeric grant for his second book, Climbing Out, in 2002. Brian has also won two Ignatz Awards at the Small Press Expo. Brianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s illustrations have appeared in a number of publications, including Wired and The New York Times, and his comics have appeared in The Museum of Modern Art newsletter, Nickelodeon Magazine, The Drama magazine, and Giant Robot. Currently, Brian is an adjunct professor in the Illustration department at the Maryland Institute College of Art where he teaches Sequential Art, Character Development, Narrative Illustration, and Illustration Concepts.

Eishi Takaoka Although the sculptures of Eishi Takaoka all portray the same serene expression, their outwardly calm façade belies a world of bottled-up emotions. With nowhere to go, these intense feelings manifest themselves in outlandish formations that sprout out the top of each ﬁgure’s head. The uniquely sculpted heads of Takaoka are rooted in a personal fantasy world that is fueled by the emotional ups and downs of daily life in lowermiddle class Japan. He instills his frustration with life in Kagoshima and feelings of isolation into each of the pieces, which are comprised of carved wood painted with raw mineral pigments placed atop empty glass medicine bottles. Takaoka’s pieces have been seen in group shows in Tokyo and New York, one-person exhibitions at Giant Robot New York and GR2 in Los Angeles, and on the cover of novelist Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.

Ben Woodward “I was born in West Philadelphia in the summer of 1974 on the day the Supreme Court subpoenaed the tapes from the Nixon White House. I was always really bad at school. I am dyslexic, and still really bad at reading and writing. That made me draw all the time. When I was in high school, my family moved to the suburbs, and I met Andrew Jeffrey Wright and Adam Wallacavage, who introduced me to skateboarding and zinemaking. I spent a few years living in Providence, RI working for Shepard Fairey before the Obey thing took off. He showed me how to screen print and wheat paste. When I moved back to Philadelphia in ’97, John Freeborn, Jeff Wiesner, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Adam Wallacavage, Max Lawrence, and I started Space 1026 gallery and studios. We have been working and showing art for almost 10 years now. I’ve had shows everywhere from South Philadelphia to Osaka, Japan. With my work, I try to ﬁnd a moment that unites people in their common experiences. I like to use anthropomorphic characters to keep the race and gender out of my paintings, even though I try to address race and sex. I don’t want the viewer to identify with a character’s color–just his or her experience.”

Kohei Yamashita The mastermind behind Mountain Mountain designs, manufactures, and markets characters and character goods that recall old-school sensibilities, aesthetics, and execution. The animals and insects Kohei Yamashita draws look more like European childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book illustrations than big-eyed anime characters, and they are more likely to be set in nature settings than anything resembling the hyrid futurism of Tokyo. His craftmanship might be considered traditional as well. In addition to making ďŹ gures, mobile kits, puzzles, handbags, and housewares, he designs work for the likes of Isamu Nogochi, Pilot pens, and LEGO.

About Giant Robot Giant Robot magazine began in 1994 as a stapled-and-folded zine and has grown into a full-ﬂedged bimonthly magazine available at most stores and newsstands. Giant Robot opened its ﬁrst store in 2001, and formulated a combination of pop-culture goods, including imported Japanese toys, graphic design and art books, and monthly art exhibitions. Since then, Giant Robot has opened stores and galleries in San Francisco and New York City, and also operates a restaurant called gr/eats in West Los Angeles. Curating the exhibition is the publisher/co-editor and owner, Eric Nakamura who curates most of the 36 exhibitions Giant Robot presents annually in the three cities.

For more information, visit www.giantrobot.com

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Scion Installation L.A. 3521 Helms Ave. (at National) Culver City, CA 90232 scion.com/space/ 310-815-8840