“There are many copy bands, but I am the best,” says Aikawa Masaru [read more]

Modernism’s doctrine of functionalism put the ornamental in a corner and spat at it, but apparently the decorative is making a quiet comeback [read more]

The prolific director / actor / film editor / stand-up comedian / TV presenter / author / poet / painter / sculptor / videogame designer / general no good layabout Beat Takeshi Kitano has taken over the Fondation Cartier in Paris [read more]

Akihiko Amano on the art of language and the language of art [read more]

“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the pattern of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.” (Jun’ichirō Tanizaki) [read more]

Picture books, wolves, red shoes, forests, metamorphosis, Buddha and traditional Japanese architecture are the the main recurring motifs in Tomoko Konoike’s mythologically-derived work that sets out to examine man’s relationship with nature [read more]

Meiro Koizumi is best known for his video art, but here’s a peek into his collage work. By painting onto magazine pages he changes XXX into G-rated scenes, but the transformation is never quite complete. Whether his women are depicted with pretty dresses in candy-coloured settings or as grey twin towers, there’s always a hint of the image’s naughty past showing through beneath the surface. If censorship was always this artful, I’d be all for it. [read more]

“But you are still thinking in terms of a life with a real face. The mask does not deceive and is not deceived. How about putting on a new mask, turning over a new leaf, and starting another life?”

(Kobo Abe, The Face of Another)

A look back at a look book from 2006, marking the first collection from Fugahum; a fashion label which frequently crosses over into the realms of  visual art and  instillation.

After 6 years as a designer with Yohji Yamamoto, Asuka Yamamoto formed Fugahum with Akiyoshi Mishima, an artist, art director, graphic designer, film director and VJ. Their work together is based on the notion of a fictional nation named ‘Fugahum’, and their aesthetic nestles somehwere at the boarders of street and fantasy; gothic and futuristic; macarbe and beautiful [read more]

Do blank canvases make you nervous? Why not make like Ushio Shinohara and show them who’s boss with a few good punches in their blank faces?! [read more]