Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Giant Robot X Scion makes Pixel Pushers. The name is something that's ubiquitous with anything digital, but we used it anyway. Our last exhibition, Paper Shapers did well, so we thought the naming mojo should be consistent. The show features great artists. Zach Gage, Kohei Yamashita, Len Higa, Shawn Smith, Jude Buffum, Nullsleep, Daniel Rehn, and more. It began a year ago with the making of the Famicom inspired car. I got the green light to design it and Len Higa fabricated it. Adam Robezzoli helped with the gaming aspects, and off it went.
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Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.
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Thursday night I was one of the lucky hundreds to get a sneak preview of Small Gift, a carnival extravaganza celebrating 50 years of Sanrio. 50 years of celebration can't be contained in any old building, so you'll be heading to Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport. The party is in LA through the 21st and has a ton of activities planned throughout the week. Faves, besides the cotton candy and Kirin, were the displays of vintage Sanrio items that once lived in my elementary school back pack and was coveted by all the kids who made fun of my Asian kid lunches. Those kids all eat kimchee now when they go on foodie adventures. I'm not bitter…. Bring your wallet. They've got carnival games, Hello Kitty themed treats, and an art show that may still have available works by some GR friends, Buff Monster, Gary Taxali, Martin Hsu, Luke Chueh and many more.
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[nggallery id=30] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Art Show Magnetic Anomalies Giant Robot SF 618 Shrader Street San Francisco, CA 94117 gr-sf.com 415-876-4773 Giant Robot is proud to host Magnetic Anomalies, a group art show featuring new work by Leslie Winchester, Nick Arciaga, Jesse Balmer, and Jesse Fillingham. Leslie Winchester applies her hyper realistic illustration skills to make classic portraiture with touches of H.R. Giger as well as still life images of alien forms with vaguely organic shapes. The Bay Area artist’s work, which is most often in black and white, expertly and skillfully mixes concrete forms with surreal shapes to create odd discomfort, unusual tension, and pure visual stimulation. Nick Arciaga acts as curator and creator of his own natural history museum. His work documents the intersection of science and magic in otherworldly landscapes, records impossible scenarios in alternate histories, diagrams alien lifecycles, and describes occult rituals using graphite and paint. His art draws inspiration from vintage scientific diagrams, early photography, cryptozoology, and science fiction, then reconstitutes it into an alternate dimension whose inhabitants remain insolent in the face of entropy. Jesse Balmer channels the acid-soaked detail of underground comix and psychedelic expansiveness of black-light posters to imbue his universe of furrowed-browed, remotely human, and naked bipeds with a vintage sci-fi feel that predates Star Wars. His work ranges from (but is not limited to) crisp black-and-white illustrations to florescent watercolors to art-damaged photography. In his works, Jesse Fillingham pits man against beast, legend against reality, and brush strokes against paper to create epic-yet-earthly images that both recall and deconstruct classic imagery. His mostly earthy palette gives an equally historic and urgent feel to depictions of creatures and warriors that might be seen on an ancient urn as well as musicians and actors on the covers of modern newsstands. Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based magazine about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as an online equivalent. An opening reception for many of the artists will take place on 6:30 – 10:00 on Saturday, November 13. For more information about the artists, GRSF, or Giant Robot magazine, please contact: Eric Nakamura Giant Robot Owner/Publisher eric@giantrobot.com (310) 479-7311 ###
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After Carey and Jamie's wedding, we had just a couple of days to do as much stuff as possible. One thing we wanted to check out was the Basquiat exhibit at the Modern Art Museum. Maybe it's a little weird for an American tourist to see an American art retrospective in France, but a lot of locals were doing it, too. The line was quite long. The difference was that I got a lot of the references, like Betty and Barney Hill, villains from Marvel Comics, or certain baseball players. It's crazy that someone scribbled on one of the pieces just the other day… I know Basquiat's stuff looks easy, but come on. You can't do that. It seemed like every time we went to see something, there was a bonus. This time it was an extensive Larry Clark photo exhibit. Because his raw depictions of youth culture and kids doing grown-up things seems so natural, it's tempting to dismiss them as gimmicky or sordid, but it can't be easy to depict subcultures without overdramatizing or cheesing out. The bigger prints were especially impressive, and best of all was the pet portraiture by his mom, which prefaced the collection. At this point, my family and I split up, with my brother, Dad, and me heading out to meet the cousins at the Catacombs. Yes, touristy but I had to see the famous tunnels and skeletons. On the way, we saw some of the ongoing public dissent over the proposed raising of the retirement age. In France, protest has nothing to do with bandanas or gas masks. It was totally organized, with marchers following a flatbed truck carrying a guy with a megaphone and a DJ playing the Village People's “Y.M.C.A.” at red lights between chants. I appreciated the concern expressed by some family members back at home, but there was really nothing to worry about. Nothing. Honestly, the protests and transportation strikes hardly affected us at atll. Back to the Catacombs… A lot of tension builds as you walk down stairs and through tunnels that become darker and damper. Finally, you reach a chamber with a few photos and some history, and that's where the piles of bones begin. I backed away from the first stack of bones only to realize there was more right behind me. There are no barriers between you and the remains, and it's only human nature (not necessarily decency) that prevented visitors from writing graffiti all over it (since it was everywhere else). As you go on, the way the bones are arranged becomes more stylized. The skulls go from being lined up in rows to forming crosses, chapels, and other shapes. My cousin Scott and I had fun shooting–in a respectful way, of course–and I was bummed that I forgot to post some of my better pics on Halloween. Hopefully I'll remember next year. In the meantime, if you need cover art for your new death metal album, let me know! Following the Catacombs,...
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