Ok, so I'm late to the plastic joy bandwagon, but better late than never. So hip is the urban Asian aesthetic, probably helped by the weak dollar abroad, who knows!, that even the Americans and Brits are doing their thing. The side-hobby of some of the world's industrial designers have turned to making these little plastic cartoon-like creatures, not reliant on stale uninspired brands like Barbie & GI Joe, nor on dominant media of Star Wars/Trek, not even on the more creative, but old Asian aethetic currency of the robot or superhero/antihero/bug/mechanical, obsessive, detailed, with a sort of the fetish of a super-realistic space age. No, this store sells creations slightly more abstract and expressive... a odd-shapped man that looks like he's made of wood and glass though it's actually plastic (by Michael Lau) is found among hundreds of creatures encased in the shelves of this little store. There's a piece that's simply a couch with a large over-sized cat head (separate piece). It's both disturbing and evokative. It seems to express something about the depressing nature of the TV set (though there is no TV); and at the same time, is fun to look at, a joke. Super fake but hyper real, good modern art, challenging, and leaving you with a lot of questions and even more to say. The color palatte these artists use are subtle, sophisticated, and really have an aesthetic impact. Sure some of the stuff is more juvenille or mawkishly dark a la Spike-and-Mike's Twisted Animation... but then again, much of the audience for this stuff IS FOR the pre-high school grad, so why not. There's much more to say about this place (like how you buy these things like baseball cards, without knowing which figure you're going to get; or like the following that a particular artist has among the crowd), but why not check it out yourself. It started as a website, then a store in SF, last year one in NY, and another in LA. Go. Before it gets stale and old or hyped and over, while the raw life is still beating in it & while you can still see it not through comment and category, but with your own eyes...
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