The Good, The Bad, and Ryohei Tanaka

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August 25, 12:05 PM

by Marisa Nakasone, S.F. Art Examiner

 

 

Ryohei Tanaka.

All photos courtesy of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Ryohei Tanaka, one of the artists featured in the group show You Only Excist Because of Us: The Art of Inbeciles (on view at Giant Robot SF from August 16-September 17) was gracious enough to respond to some questions I had about his work.  As mentioned in an earlier post about the “Inbeciles” at GRSF, Tanaka fuses traditional style with contemporary vision to create intricate cut-out pieces.  It is interesting to consider Tanaka’s work with his background with Japanese popular culture (retro action television series Ultra-Man, Power Rangers) and the concept of polar opposities (i.e. Good vs. Evil).  You can find more information about Ryohei Tanaka and his other bodies of work at his website: www.ryoheitanaka77.com

 Thanks again, Ryohei!

...What do you see?

1) What inspires your work?  What is your process for thinking about and creating art… for your cut-out work?

When I was small I watched Ultra-Man and Power Rangers sort of shows and all kinds of anime on TV. In many shows I liked there were “good guys” and “bad guys,”  heroes and villains. They fight. Usually the good guys win. I didn`t care much about the heroes. They weren’t as attractive as the villains. The good guys remain in the same costume every week but the bad-buys change
every week because the one before is dead--killed by the good guy. The bad guys try to take over the world every week with very interesting ideas and wild and crazy looking monsters. Awesome.
As a kid, I wanted to role play the show in my hands.  So, I cut the bad guy characters from the show out of a piece of scratch paper. In the beginning, I drew them first and then cut them out--but that wasn’t fast enough. It wasn’t efficient. I was and still am impatient and lazy.

I started to fold the paper in half and cut the half of the shape of the character first.  Then I opened it, and realized that there was a whole shape of character with
less effort. I drew inside with pencil. There were a lot of bad guys in stock with not much of the good guys. At the beginning there wasn’t even a cut figure of good guy. There was only a hero character called “the Scissors Man” which was just an actual pair of scissors--I just wanted to do the killing and fighting.  I made the bad guys and The scissors man fight. The paper can’t win against the scissors. They lose. When the scissors man cuts the bad guys’ arm I add the drawing of bleeding wound with red pen. In the end of the show, the BAD-GUYS get killed and I throw them in the trash. Later I started to make hero characters too. There was an army of good and
an army of EVIL. In the very end everybody is dead. I have
no characters left.
I started to do this probably around the 2nd or 3rd grade and it continued till around 7th grade.
I learned a lot from doing this. Even though it originated from TV I still had to make stories and characters. I had to do voices of different characters. Sometimes there were several bad guys and good guys in one show. (I call it “show”  for now but I never really showed to anyone. It was strictly for my pleasure.) So, that was how it started. TV was my inspiration.
Is this getting too long?
I didn’t start doing paper cutting again till I was in college. I did a lot of drawings in between though.
I never thought cutting paper was a special thing.
One day I was in my class I cut little character out of boredom. A girl sitting next to me was really surprised. I was surprised that she was surprised. I thought anyone could do it. I still think so. I am slightly more skilled than before but anyone who could use scissors should be able to do this. It is matter of practice like anything else.I am glad not much people are doing this though so I could stay being a person who is good at doing paper cut.
I realized I am not really answering your question here.
My process: I fold the paper and start cutting with scissors. Sometimes I use those funny shaped blade scissors too. Recently I started using many different kind of hole puncher with interesting shapes. They look cool if I use it right. My favorite scissors is the one I got from LongDrug`s
craft section. Small but not tiny. I have sketches of ideas in my notebook. Most of the time I do not draw first. I usually go straight to cutting the image. I have general idea of whatthe shapes are going to be but I wouldn`t know for sure till I unfold it. That way it is kind of like
print making. I want to make more big one like I made it for the show but since so much folding and cutting it thin involved, it is super annoying to keep it safe from tearing it up.

Good Guys or Bad Guys?

2) How did you guys decide upon the title of the show?  Why the intentional mispelling of "exist" and what is meant by "art of imbeciles?"  How does this concept work with the pieces you have in the show?

We had several idea for the title of the show. Which were:
Crab Shack Attack
Put on Your Muscle Pants
"You Only Excist Because of Us!": The Art of Imbeciles
Mercy Killing Spree
Idiots bargain
Yellow idiot, Blue moron and Red numbskull.
I don't know, you don't know, we don't know: art of no
idea.
Misused thousand dicks

We did the voting. I misspelled the word `Imbeciles` to `Inbeciles`. People in the show liked it so it became. Not much people pointed out the miss spelling though. `Excist` part was, also originated from my miss spelled note to the Dave Choe long ago. We visited Dave in LA but he wasn`t home so we decided to leave the note to his door. I wrote the note which was spelled incorrectly but funny enough to make some sense. We had no concept for the show. I think we just did what we usually do and put them up on the wall. So,the title of the show includes not much meaning. We thought it was funny.

3) What are you currently working on/ future projects?

Recently I decided to become really good at cutting paper. So I am practicing more. I think I am getting better. At least technique wise but when one look at the contents of the picture there are really nothing to it. Which isn’t too bad but it has not much to read other than shape itself. So, once in a while, not the all the time because I like meaningless stuff, but once in a while I hope to make something sort of make sense, something which includes the story, something with meaning or something to explain. Rob Sato is good at making that kind of stuff. Last year Rowan Morrison Gallery in Oakland published the book of my paper-cuts:
http://www.rowanmorrison.com/book_killercuts.html
http://www.rowanmorrison.com/
You can get it from Giant Robot store too. The book is called `Killer Cuts and Killing Shapes` and it looks great. I want to make second book sometime soon but I don`t know when. I would like to keep making something astonishing and funny. Because I like the word `astonishing` and I like funny stuff.

4) Favorite movie, book, food, music, artist(s).

Movie:
The Limey, The Way of the Gun, Sexy Beast, Glengarry Glen Ross, Sweet and Lowdown, CASINO, Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Amelie, Straw Dogs, Romeo is Bleeding, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, Underground, Trainspotting, Shallowgrave, Dr.Strangelove…among with many many others. and most of Coen Bros., Jim Jarmusch, Tarantino, Takeshi Kitano, Shinya Tsukamoto movies.

Book:
Braindropping by George Carlin. Any comics by Fumiko Takano. Most comics by Minoru Furuya. Most books by Ramo Nakajima, Kohtaro Isaka.

Food:
Tako-yaki, Tai-yaki, Okonomi-yaki, Ramen, CurryRice. Most stuff my mom cooks. And most food that taste good.

Music: Tamio Okuda, Denki Groove, Scha Dara Parr. And many other music I happened to like.

Artist:  It is hard to define “Artist.” George Carlin(R.I.P.), Steven Wright, DownTown(japanese comedian) Bananaman(japanese comedian) Picasso, Matisse, Hokusai, Mizuki Shigeru, Fujiko F. Fujio, Kako Satoshi, Sena Keiko. Among with many, many others.

Giant Robot SF

618 Shrader St.

San Francisco, CA 94117

Gallery Hours: M-F 11:30-8:00; Sat 11:00-8:00; Sun 12:00-7:00
 

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