Aiko Nakagawa at Joshua Liner Gallery

Art work by Aiko Nakagawa
Originally uploaded by killerfemme

Aiko Nakgawa is an artist about town (I suppose quite literally, since she is a street artist as well as making works of fine art like the one pictured here). Sometimes I wonder when she has time to paint, especially as she has been having so many awesome shows lately. I was lucky enough to be invited to the opening of the group show she is part of, "Locked and Loaded" at the Joshua Liner Gallery in Chelsea. This is the gallery's inaugural show and includes work by other artists such as Crash One, Shawn Barber, Kenji Hirata, Jessica Joslin, and Tomokazu Matsuyama. Much of the work in the show was too slick for my tastes (I think Aiko Ishigawa, a new writer friend, called it the "Juxtapoz style" in reference to the magazine). I was quite taken, however, by the acrylic painting "3Rip Horse" by Tomokazu Matsuyama, the delicate yet creepy sculptural constructions of Jessica Joslin, and of course, Aiko's work. I love how her large canvases look like work that has been put up on the street and had layers of wheatpasted fliers and other artwork put up over it. Her paintings and stencil work has texture that keeps you engaged in looking, while their graphic boldness immediately catches the eye.

Brick Ladies of NYC at Ad Hoc Gallery

Last week I was privileged enough to be invited to the "V.I.P." opening of the "Brick Ladies of NYC" show at Ad Hoc Gallery in Williamsburg. The show features legendary graffiti artist Lady Pink and verging on legendary street artist Aiko, formerly of the artist collective Faile. The show is a conversation between the two artists. Lady Pink's graffiti style paintings on canvas are hung on the left hand side of the gallery and Aiko's paintings, prints and a vitrine of jewelry and the bunny toy she recently designed for Kid Robot, on the right. Joining the two is the back wall of the gallery which is a collaborative work between the two artists. The wall is dominated by different shades of pink which, on first look, seem to be simply nebulous rose clouds. Upon closer inspection figures painted by pink and stenciled by Aiko reveal themselves in the blobs. Both artists deal with the female figure. A friend joked that if "the artists were straight men you would be mad." Lady Pink's paintings show women, often made up of bricks and forming the city, and the brick women depicted in the the canvasses become the walls Lady Pink paints. Aiko's women recall classic pin-up girls with butterflies and bunnies playfully stenciled, painted and screen printed in strategic locations. As such, her work questions the ways women become commodities in a marketplace, promoting and selling with their suggestive sexuality. The cross gallery dialogue is also carried out between the two artists' styles. Lady Pink's paintings are slick, the paint heavy, glossy and vibrantly colored, and it is easy to imagine her earlier work adorning city walls and subway cars, though it is just as easily adapted to the canvas. Aiko's work is frantically (but carefully) layered, prints and stencils carefully placed, paint drips exuberantly controlled. You can imagine the pieces being wheat pasted on a conspicuous doorway near you. Ad Hoc owner Andrew Michael Ford, an exuberant supporter of Lady Pink and Aiko's work, calls this work the "new contemporary" and I certainly hope that we see more work as dedicated and strikingly executed (and fun!) as this. The show is up until April 20th.