You be the judge: [here]

From the LA Weekly via The Wooster Collective

In the early morning hours in mid-December, an amazing masterpiece of epic pink proportions appeared above the Melrose strip. Not MOCA’s Murakami billboard itself, but rather a young curator’s fantasy art show: “Murakami/AUGER/REVOK.” The spectacle lasted two days, and then it was gone. For most of us who missed it entirely, the billboard became art-opening gossip - already a mythic achievement - and yet another coup pulled off by a couple of L.A.’s most prolific and talented AWR/MSK writers. Luckily, REVOK carried his camera that day, and L.A. Weekly received the photo; we were wowed. So, it turns out, was Murakami, whose Kaikai Kiki studio found the evidence via the Internet and had the billboard surreptitiously removed. Murakami buffing billboards all the way from Japan? On the contrary, according to his representatives, he found it “so wonderful, he had to have it for his collection.” Our billboard is now on its way to Tokyo.

[also via]

The artist states:

“I think that our distance from nature is already a cliché. City dwellers often have no relationship with animals or greenery. As a public artist I feel a sense of duty to draw attention to deficiencies in our everyday life. As a cultivator of eco-urban sensitivity, I usually go back to the sites to visit my “plants” or “moss”, sometimes to repair them a bit, but nothing more generally as they tend to get enough water from the air, condensation, and rain - especially in certain seasons. I also like to let them live by themselves. From the moment I put them on the street they start to have their own life. For me, the reaction of life on the street is also very important. I am curious about how people receive them, if they just leave them alone, or if they want to, take care of them or dismantle them. This is what makes my work similar to graffiti, although I am searching for a deeper social meaning and a dialogue with memories of the animals and gardens of my past in a small town in Central Europe. I believe that if everyone had a garden of their own to cultivate, we would have a much more balanced relation to our territories. Of course, a garden can be many things.”

I grew up in an artistic household. Design and art were pretty much a part of everyday life and I can remember spending hours drawing or looking through art books of all sorts. I though also remember the difficulty of making any sort of living out of art and that is what probably led me to pursue a more rational career in product design; how much more money there is to be made doing that though can at times be debatable. (more…)