Japanese Character Toys: Part II by Steve Agin

25 August 2008

Welcome to the new age in contemporary art where toys have become the stuff that art is made from! Particularly influential are Japanese character toys of the last 40 years. Saturday@Phillips will offer some of the most distinctive artworks from vintage Japanese to the NEW designer forms of the moment.

Lot 89
Carlos Enriquez Gonzalez's (13"tall fiberglass) "Vagina Brain Monster". An unfathomably rich metaphysical creation inspired by 1970's Japanese sci-fi TV with the 'Surreal blessings' of Jean Cocteau and Max Ernst.

Lot 80
Bob Conge and Plaseebo Studio's "WAR" (10" urethane) is brutal social commentary. Encrusted with the drastic and disastrous effects and remains of battle it is a 'moraine of carnage' embodying the primordial spirit of mankind at his most destructive. The face of this demon is bloody and voracious and at the same time blind in its sightless glass eyes. Truly impactful, insightful, inciteful. It demonstrates another side of what is hidden beneath our everyday experience of reality not available on TV.

Lot 69
Kenzi Murabayashi's custom version of Paul Cruikshank's modern totem, "Circus Punk" (15" wood and mixed media) is a grand Pop vision of us at play in the 'carnival of life'. Once upon a shelf for the pleasure of "3 balls for a quarter" throws by hoi polloi showing off their expert aim, this icon has been transformed into a snapshot of memory and the revelation of our culture.

Lot 92
Tim Biskup's "WAR Dragon" is another anti-war statement but couched in a Japanese style, vinyl plaything. This 12" traditional type figure has been made to 'open wide and swallow' pewter effigies of guns, knives, etc. as well as brightly colored and glow bits of other sacrificed vinyl figures. Ingenious, carnivorous and transparent as modern art. It comes in a hand-painted tin "coffin".

Lot 68
Marmit Co. (Japan) "Burning Godzilla" is an exquisite example of the state of the art in Japanese 9" vinyl figural toys. Made of the famous hero in a new process (double slash cast mold) it is presented in an inner and outer layer of yellow and orange translucent vinyls magically sustaining a 'colloidal suspension' of gold glitter - Superb!

Lot 75
Frank Kozik's "Stalin Bust" cast in hot Pink is a vinyl memorial charade that would probably kill the Soviet dictator if he was still alive - true to history and his Art, Kozik has stuck a cigarette in Stalin's mouth. As much a thumbed-nose salute to the 'commie-czar' as a wave and a bow from one of the world's foremost contemporary Pop artists.

Lot 83
Mark Nagata and Max Toy Co's custom version of his own nod to Japanese Monster vinyl figures, "Eyezon" is a giant gloriously and beautiously colored 'boogie-man' in a mode most reminiscent of Tiffany and Venetian glass masterpieces. Frighteningly stylish, it makes us impatient to receive the invasion from outer space.