Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
GR2 ARTIST TALK & DEMO FEAT. AKO CASTUERA SUN, APRIL 29, 3-5PM They Are Us – Ako Castuera will be at Giant Robot 2 to explain and even demo her work. You might get a chance to try some drawing and painting yourself! I AM FINE EISHI TAKAOKA SOLO EXHIBITION MAY 5 – MAY 30, 2012 RECEPTION: SAT, MAY 5, 6:30-10PM Eishi Takaoka’s work is coming back. 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 of 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 lower-middle 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. For this exhibition, Takaoka will create 34 sculptures at Giant Robot 2 in Los Angeles. He is currently attending school in his hometown of Kagoshima, Japan and will not be in Los Angeles for the opening. THEY ARE US NEW WORK BY AKO CASTUERA APRIL 7 – MAY 2, 2012 Ako Castuera often shows at Giant Robot in group exhibitions. This will be her first solo effort at Giant Robot. Castuera’s work involves a look into the past which has brought us into the present. Along with her sweeping watercolor hills and valleys are dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. Castuera relays their significance as a dreaming point as well as their contribution in our ecosystem. Also in this exhibition will be sculptural work also depicting prehistoric animals captured in a modernistic style. Castuera’s work is colorful, dreamy and captures a concept that explains who we are and where we came from. FETCH PORTAL BODY See all unsold MOLESKINE – STAR WARS LTD ED RULED NOTEBOOK A limited edition dedicated to the greatest space epic ever told combines classic Moleskine features with exclusive artwork from the original 1977 film. MOLESKINE SHELL (SMALL) Case for smartphone, iPod, digital camera and small personal items. It can be attached to any bag and is fitted with an anti-theft closure. Ideal for any kind of journey. LEAFRESH SELF-WATERING CULTIVATION KIT (MARIGOLD) Cultivate edible flowers in this easy self watering growing kit. Grow the subtle tasting Marigold on your windowsill with no effort! Plants drink water from the bottom clear pot through a fabric wick. UGLY VEGETABLE PLANT KIT (UGLY CINDERELLA TOMATO) Ugly Vegetables make an interesting yet delicious addition to your diet. This plant kit allows you to easily cultivate...
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The Hong Kong Motion Pictures Industry Association (MPIA) is urging the world’s largest video-sharing website, YouTube, to enforce international copyright infringement measures after finding footage from some of its blockbuster box-office hits like Love in the Buff and some 200 other films available for free online. This week, the HK association blamed YouTube for estimated losses of $308 million, adding that YouTube was slow to remove the illegally uploaded version of Love in the Buff, even after Media Asia, the film’s producers, filed a formal complaint. HK filmmakers say a recent search found some of their most popular hits available on the Google-owned YouTube servers, including Hong Kong Film Awards winners: A Simple Life, The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Echoes of the Rainbow, and Shaolin Soccer. Blockbuster Ip Man and its sequel were split into 107 video files, while the pirated YouTube videos of clubbing drama Lan Kwai Fong and Jet Li’s Fearless received 1.8 million and 1.4 million hits, respectively. A classic fight scene from Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon was viewed 4.8 million times. (The Hollywood Reporter – HK Piracy)
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No hype here for the proposed American bastardization of the classic and prescient Japanese manga tale of dystopian ennui and Armageddon that shook the world and changed the perception of comics forever. Nope. One of the most influential manga artists in the history of the genre, Katsuhiro Otomo, 58, is currently showing the more than 2,000 original drawings that made up his most acclaimed work, AKIRA, at an exhibit in Tokyo. He has not been creating much new manga for the last 20 years, but last year’s 3.11 disasters in his native northeastern Japan spurred him to look back on his past work. WATCH NHK World’s Tomoko Kamata’s report to find out why Otomo has come home again.
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Kanji characters scrawled on a soccer ball in indelible marker have linked it to a school near a region of northeastern Japan ravaged by the monster tsunami wave that devastated cities in three prefectures last March and may represent the first positively identified items to reach U.S. territory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Response and Restoration reported April 19. A soccer ball and volleyball were found on the beach of Middleton Island by David Baxter, a technician at the radar site on the remote island in the Gulf of Alaska. Baxter’s wife translated the writing on the soccer ball and traced it to the name of a school. NOAA confirmed that the school was in the tsunami zone, though located uphill and not seriously damaged by the disaster. NOAA has been monitoring floating debris from the tsunami for the past year, and some very buoyant items have already made it across the Pacific. A derelict fishing vessel drifted at least 4,500 miles before it was spotted off the coast of Canada and sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard in early April. (Anchorage Daily News – Tsunami Debris) UPDATE (Monday, April 23, 2012) MORIOKA (Kyodo) — The owner of the soccer ball that apparently floated across the Pacific Ocean from northeastern Japan after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami was found Sunday to be a teenager who survived the disaster. He says he is surprised but thankful for the Alaskan who found it. “I have no doubt that it is mine,” Misaki Murakami, a 16-year-old high school student in the devastated city of Rikuzentakata, told Kyodo News after hearing the news that his name was written on the ball found in mid-March on the coast of Middleton Island off Alaska. The ball also bore a message of encouragement in Japanese to Murakami and a signature indicating it was written in March 2005 by third graders of an elementary school, Yumi Baxter, 44, the Japanese wife of David Baxter who found the ball, told Kyodo News by phone.
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SPRING SALE SAVE 20% IN-STORE // SAVE 25% ONLINE APRIL 6 – APRIL 22, 2012 Online checkout code: grweb25. Artwork excluded from offer. THEY ARE US NEW WORK BY AKO CASTUERA APRIL 7 – MAY 2, 2012 Ako Castuera often shows at Giant Robot in group exhibitions. This will be her first solo effort at Giant Robot. Castuera’s work involves a look into the past which has brought us into the present. Along with her sweeping watercolor hills and valleys are dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. Castuera relays their significance as a dreaming point as well as their contribution in our ecosystem. Also in this exhibition will be sculptural work also depicting prehistoric animals captured in a modernistic style. Castuera’s work is colorful, dreamy and captures a concept that explains who we are and where we came from. I AM FINE EISHI TAKAOKA SOLO EXHIBITION MAY 5 – MAY 30, 2012 RECEPTION: SAT, MAY 5, 6:30-10PM Eishi Takaoka’s work is coming back. 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 of 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 lower-middle 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. For this exhibition, Takaoka will create 34 sculptures at Giant Robot 2 in Los Angeles. He is currently attending school in his hometown of Kagoshima, Japan and will not be in Los Angeles for the opening. PAUL ROBERTSON*SIGNED* PRINT Fresh from our Diversions! art show at the GR2 gallery. Paul Robertson’s 8-bit style prints are available signed by the man himself. Inspiration for his work is found in popular culture, video games, animation and nostalgia. DOMO 2″ QEESERIES 4 FIGURE New series featuring everyone’s favorite character Domo Kun! These blind boxes have an awesome array of styles that are more rare than the next! JAMES JEANXOXO POSTCARD SET GR contributing artists James Jean has released this wonderful set of postcards featuring images of his much talked about paintings. 30 postcards in the set! JAMES JEANKINDLING A poster book featuring 12 brand new, never-before-published paintings by award-winning artist James Jean. Each of the 11″ x 16″ pull-out prints is bound into a paperback portfolio and features a full-color painting on one side and intricate sketches on the opposite side. ED LINONE RED BASTARD In One Red Bastard, Ed Lin’s thrilling sequel to...
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