another Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of art: “hey you got your Northwest in my Japanese!” “You got your Japanese in my Northwest!”
See here. There’s nothing more we really have to say to get you curious enough to check out “Tokyo in PDX” at OFFICE (2204 NE Alberta) opening this Thursday, August 31 from 7 to 9 PM. There’s a Japanese pop sensibility here that two artists, one a husband and wife team mine in very different ways.
APAK is Aaron and Ayumi Piland, not long ago relocated from Japan to Portland, OR and Fumi Watanabe is based in Seattle.
But if we were to say something, we could do worse than quoting the PR, calling the new mixed media work, a “juxtaposition of modern, urban East-West aesthetic inspired by traditional Japanese icons, transformed by Northwest Modernism” when talking about Watanabe’s early 70’s girls meet Japanese flower prints on wood or APAK’s supercute-modern-flatnesses. And you may find it interesting that the super-slashed Watanabe is “artist/art director/ designer/trend researcher/illustrator/ conceptual thinker” who recently created the “entryway experience” for Surface Magazine’s Anniversary issue, who by day is art director for Starbucks.
WHAT TO DO NOW?