Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
giant robot time: 9.27.13 | art by: kozyndan view in browser Magic Bodies Exhibition of New Work by Ako Castuera September 28 – October 16, 2013 Reception: Saturday, September 28, 6:30 – 10 PM Giant Robot is proud to present Magic Bodies, an exhibition featuring new work by Ako Castuera. Enough time has elapsed since Ako Castuera’s previous solo exhibition at GR2 and her participation at the Giant Robot Biennale 3. Castuera’s new body of work is comprised of challenges to her various influences, including her contemporary view on Pre-Columbian style ceramics. ”This show is about giving shape to the imagination,” says Castuera. “I picture it as an invisible ocean that is around us and inside of us while we go about our daily routines, aware and unaware of it. This is what it looks like when it comes through me.” Castuera’s previous exhibitions included ceramic sculptures, 2d art and a melding of ideas into a well designed exhibition atmosphere. “I’m thinking of my sculptures as projections of big stories onto a small stage, ancient characters who are going through a costume change.” Listen to a podcast featuring the artist. Event Uglydoll x Universal Monsters Plushes Uglydoll has teamed up with Universal to release famous monster versions of the new classic Uglydoll characters. Tanya O | Kiyomi Koide Ceramic Cups We have an assortment of cute handmade ceramic cups, perfect for hot drinks on a cool autumn day. Mark Ryden Fushigi Circus A collection of the works of Mark Ryden. Features works prior to the Tree Show, including Blood, Sweat, Tears, and The Creatrix. Edward & John Harrison - Fuzz & Fur: Japan’s Costumed Characters “Kigurumi” or “dressing up as a stuffed toy” is explored through photographs and interviews. Uglydoll Shhhhhhhh! Comic OX, Wage, Babo, Ice-Bat and all their friends in the Uglyverse want you (their favorite Ugly) to join in their adventures! Hello Kitty Here We Go! Comic Hello Kitty’s first comic book adventure! Plus, guest artist Susie Ghahremani takes Hello Kitty on some unexpected detours! Jeffrey Brown A Matter of Life Jeffrey Brown draws upon memories of three generations of Brown men: himself, his minister father, and his preschooler son Oscar. Brian Ralph Reggie 12 Ralph (Daybreak, Cave~In) first presented this hilarious pop-culture send-up of the infallible boy hero in the back pages of Giant Robot. Driving Ms Watanabe (TMAS9) By ERIC NAKAMURA Yesterday, I drove a 71 year old Japanese woman around West LA. She was lost. >> Donut Friend by Mark Trombino (Drive Like Jehu) is open! By MARTIN WONG Just got back from Donut Friend, the long-awaited eatery from my friend Mark Trombino. He’s known by most for producing key albums for Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World but also eternally loved by some others for his drumming with Drive Like Jehu and Night Soil Man. >> GR2: Kozyndan Reception Photo Set 2 By GIANT ROBOT NEWS Another wonderful set of photos from the End of Summer Never End...
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giant robot time: 9.27.13 | art by: kozyndan view in browser Magic Bodies Exhibition of New Work by Ako Castuera September 28 – October 16, 2013 Reception: Saturday, September 28, 6:30 – 10 PM Giant Robot is proud to present Magic Bodies, an exhibition featuring new work by Ako Castuera. Enough time has elapsed since Ako Castuera’s previous solo exhibition at GR2 and her participation at the Giant Robot Biennale 3. Castuera’s new body of work is comprised of challenges to her various influences, including her contemporary view on Pre-Columbian style ceramics. ”This show is about giving shape to the imagination,” says Castuera. “I picture it as an invisible ocean that is around us and inside of us while we go about our daily routines, aware and unaware of it. This is what it looks like when it comes through me.” Castuera’s previous exhibitions included ceramic sculptures, 2d art and a melding of ideas into a well designed exhibition atmosphere. “I’m thinking of my sculptures as projections of big stories onto a small stage, ancient characters who are going through a costume change.” Listen to a podcast featuring the artist. Event Uglydoll x Universal Monsters Plushes Uglydoll has teamed up with Universal to release famous monster versions of the new classic Uglydoll characters. Tanya O | Kiyomi Koide Ceramic Cups We have an assortment of cute handmade ceramic cups, perfect for hot drinks on a cool autumn day. Mark Ryden Fushigi Circus A collection of the works of Mark Ryden. Features works prior to the Tree Show, including Blood, Sweat, Tears, and The Creatrix. Edward & John Harrison - Fuzz & Fur: Japan’s Costumed Characters “Kigurumi” or “dressing up as a stuffed toy” is explored through photographs and interviews. Uglydoll Shhhhhhhh! Comic OX, Wage, Babo, Ice-Bat and all their friends in the Uglyverse want you (their favorite Ugly) to join in their adventures! Hello Kitty Here We Go! Comic Hello Kitty’s first comic book adventure! Plus, guest artist Susie Ghahremani takes Hello Kitty on some unexpected detours! Jeffrey Brown A Matter of Life Jeffrey Brown draws upon memories of three generations of Brown men: himself, his minister father, and his preschooler son Oscar. Brian Ralph Reggie 12 Ralph (Daybreak, Cave~In) first presented this hilarious pop-culture send-up of the infallible boy hero in the back pages of Giant Robot. Driving Ms Watanabe (TMAS9) By ERIC NAKAMURA Yesterday, I drove a 71 year old Japanese woman around West LA. She was lost. >> Donut Friend by Mark Trombino (Drive Like Jehu) is open! By MARTIN WONG Just got back from Donut Friend, the long-awaited eatery from my friend Mark Trombino. He’s known by most for producing key albums for Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World but also eternally loved by some others for his drumming with Drive Like Jehu and Night Soil Man. >> GR2: Kozyndan Reception Photo Set 2 By GIANT ROBOT NEWS Another wonderful set of photos from the End of Summer Never End...
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Tutankhamun at LACMA 1978 – Tell Me a Story 10 This past sunday, my friend Max walked in with a vintage vinyl record that contained a brochure advertising “Treasures of Tutankhamun”. He was showing it to me because it was cool and it took place before he was born. Ironically, I was born and I was there. The year was 1978. King Tut was at the LA County Museum of Art and it was a spectacle. There were lines to get in and crowds bunched in front of each glass-cased artifact. There were 55 items, one for each year since the 1922 discovery, and I clearly remember the icon of the exhibition – The Mask of the Mummy in it’s goldenness. This show was huge. Word travelled via newspaper, TV and even brochure. As a 9 year old, a fine art museum doesn’t offer much. Paintings and sculptures, as grand as they can be, won’t do it. If there isn’t a space to run or an object to climb, what value is it? Yet in our imaginations, King Tut was as great as a T-Rex. It was greater than a Dodger game and on par with Star Wars. You had to see it so you could brag about it at school. The urban legends helped, since some of the original excavators mysteriously died. Did the tomb cast a curse? It was something parents would love to tell their kids. All of a sudden on top of “once in a lifetime,” there was danger. It was like seeing Ozzy and thinking you’d be sprayed by bat’s blood. It sounded cool. Some research on King Tut’s 2005 return yielded: “With more than 850,000 tickets sold since the exhibition opened on June 16, 2005, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs has become the second most popular exhibition in LACMA’s history, exceeded only by the 1978 visit of Treasures of Tutankhamun.” The 1978 LA exhibition was reported to have 1.25 million visitors and the entire US tour, over 9 million. Perhaps the largest exhibition in the world. I posted an image of the brochure online and people continue to comment: “I was there”, “I saw it twice” and “I saw this in San Francisco”. 30 plus years later, it still has to be among the largest exhibitions in the world. For a generation of kids, it was a gateway to museums, and it was all thanks to a king who died in his teens, but whose tomb was filled with the coolest items imaginable. He was practically one of us, but a god. My memory isn’t clear on every aspect of the show, but it was my mother who took me there. It was 1978, she was in her 30s and lived in the US for 20 years. I was a typical 9 year old American kid. She took me to Tut and bought me a ticket to see Star Wars just a year before.
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Tutankhamun at LACMA 1978 – Tell Me a Story 10 This past sunday, my friend Max walked in with a vintage vinyl record that contained a brochure advertising “Treasures of Tutankhamun”. He was showing it to me because it was cool and it took place before he was born. Ironically, I was born and I was there. The year was 1978. King Tut was at the LA County Museum of Art and it was a spectacle. There were lines to get in and crowds bunched in front of each glass-cased artifact. There were 55 items, one for each year since the 1922 discovery, and I clearly remember the icon of the exhibition – The Mask of the Mummy in it’s goldenness. This show was huge. Word travelled via newspaper, TV and even brochure. As a 9 year old, a fine art museum doesn’t offer much. Paintings and sculptures, as grand as they can be, won’t do it. If there isn’t a space to run or an object to climb, what value is it? Yet in our imaginations, King Tut was as great as a T-Rex. It was greater than a Dodger game and on par with Star Wars. You had to see it so you could brag about it at school. The urban legends helped, since some of the original excavators mysteriously died. Did the tomb cast a curse? It was something parents would love to tell their kids. All of a sudden on top of “once in a lifetime,” there was danger. It was like seeing Ozzy and thinking you’d be sprayed by bat’s blood. It sounded cool. Some research on King Tut’s 2005 return yielded: “With more than 850,000 tickets sold since the exhibition opened on June 16, 2005, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs has become the second most popular exhibition in LACMA’s history, exceeded only by the 1978 visit of Treasures of Tutankhamun.” The 1978 LA exhibition was reported to have 1.25 million visitors and the entire US tour, over 9 million. Perhaps the largest exhibition in the world. I posted an image of the brochure online and people continue to comment: “I was there”, “I saw it twice” and “I saw this in San Francisco”. 30 plus years later, it still has to be among the largest exhibitions in the world. For a generation of kids, it was a gateway to museums, and it was all thanks to a king who died in his teens, but whose tomb was filled with the coolest items imaginable. He was practically one of us, but a god. My memory isn’t clear on every aspect of the show, but it was my mother who took me there. It was 1978, she was in her 30s and lived in the US for 20 years. I was a typical 9 year old American kid. She took me to Tut and bought me a ticket to see Star Wars just a year before.
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The final panel I attended at this year’s Comic-Con was a conversation between Gene Yang and Paul Pope about their upcoming all-ages comics. It’s a genre that I hadn’t really considered beforehand, probably because I grew up reading comics without ever thinking that they were written for kids. From the heaviness of The Silver Surfer to the gore of pre-code E.C. Comics, it was all great. But as mainstream comics have amped up the sex, violence, and controversy to new heights in an effort to keep readers interested, offerings for kids are dumbed down, cleaned up, or just plain stupid. Those sweeping generalizations are mine and not the panelists’, but perhaps it’s time to make quality comics more available to kids–like having all-ages punk shows.
Gene talked about his Boxers and Saints books, which tell story of the Boxer Rebellion through the Chinese patriots’ and Chinese Christians’ points of views, respectively. Especially interesting, considering that Gene is a student of either point of view. His books are already out and available now.
And then there’s Paul Pope’s new book. I grabbed reader’s edition and it blew my mind with its Jack Kirby meets The Twilight Zone vibe. Main characters perish, the populace is afraid, and there are awesome monsters. The hero just happens to be a kid, and he’s kind of freaked out. This ain’t Scooby-Doo.
The first installment of Battling Boy drops next month, and I want everyone to know in advance that it rules. So here’s a quick Q&A with the creator of THB, Heavy Liquid, and Batman: Year 100 to get you excited and maybe even share with your friends.
MW: Tell me why you’re making an all-ages comic. That’s something many artists don’t do unless they have kids and are stuck reading lousy kids’ comics!
PP: I think there aren’t enough good comics which are directly aimed at a kid audience. I love the challenge of making a bad-ass comic which is kid-friendly and does all the cool shit we remember from Heavy Metal magazine and old Jack Kirby comics, and delivers in such a way as to be accessible to kids. Nothing too violent or too harsh, but still not too sugar-coated and dumbed down. Something genuine. I don’t have kids, but I was a kid, you know?
MW: Do you recall what you read as a kid?
PP: I read everything. I was a voracious reader. Donald Duck through Heavy Metal through Dune, I read it all.
MW: How do you see all-ages comics these days in comparison?
PP: I dunno, I don’t look at all-ages comics, outside of Adventure Time. But if kid’s comics means Scooby-Doo and Bugs Bunny, that stuff is like 40 or 50 years old. Those are classics, for sure. But kids need new comics.