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Part of Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture
May 2 - 31, 2005
Union Square subway station

Public Art Fund presents a series of four public art projects as part of Little Boy, a major exhibition hosted by Japan Society Gallery. The exhibition and public installations, all curated by Takashi Murakami, explore the astoundingly popular phenomenon called otaku, a Japanese youth subculture obsessed with fantastic and apocalyptic science fiction, fantasy, video games, comic books (manga) and film animation (anime), whose visual and musical forms are rapidly becoming globalized.

Artist Chiho Aoshima’s large-scale digital murals portray otherworldly landscapes richly detailed with candy-colored flora and fauna. Aoshima created two separate series for Little Boy, both of which are on view in the Union Square subway station throughout May 2005. City Glow, installed near the N-R subway lines, is a multi-panel graphic work in which futuristic skyscrapers--transformed into demure, humanlike creatures--stand amidst lush tropical vegetation. A second series by Aoshima, Paradise, appears near the 4, 5 and 6 subway lines in this station. Like many of Aoshima’s works, Paradise depicts a seemingly idyllic universe where lithe fairies dwell with colorful insects, cute animals, and swirling plant life.

Aoshima renders her fantastical imagery in a singular style that seamlessly integrates the age-old tradition of Japanese scroll painting with the contemporary aesthetics of manga, the pop phenomena of Japanese comic books and graphics. Like manga, whose subject matter is characteristically darker than its American cartoon counterparts, Aoshima’s works are frequently full of apocalyptic or grotesque imagery. Her characters routinely find themselves in dire and surreal circumstances which they gracefully endure, looking out at their viewers with ambiguous, seductive gazes.

Artist Bio
Chiho Aoshima was born in 1974 in Tokyo. She graduated from the Department of Economics at Hosei University in Tokyo in 1995. Aoshima’s work was featured in a fashion spread in the May 2004 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. In October 2004 she created her largest mural to date for the 54th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. Her work has been shown at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2004), Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris (2003, 2004), Blum & Poe, Santa Monica (2002), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo (2001), and at Parco Gallery in Tokyo and Nagoya (1999, 2000). She has also worked in collaboration with Naoki Takizawa for Issey Miyake’s 2001 Spring/Summer collection.

Sponsorship
Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture is sponsored by Microsoft.

Major support for this exhibition is provided by The W.L.S. Spencer Foundation and Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. and Kaikai Kiki New York, LLC.

Additional support is provided by the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, The Rosenkranz Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Asian Cultural Council, The Blakemore Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and the Leadership Committee for Little Boy.

Artist support for this exhibition has been generously provided by Yoko Ono.

Location
Union Square subway station is accessible by the N, R, W, Q, 4, 5, 6, and L trains.