July 2011

The Birthday Party was my end exam project for the Rietveld Art Academy’s final Exhibition 2011. An instillation of an inflatable Birthday party made out of Transparent Drop Plastic (plastic used to protect furniture from paint spills). The plastic is all sewn together with a sewing machine (no glue) to create one sculptural form, blown up by a single industrial pump. The table top has a cake, candles, stacked cups, soda bottles, plates, balloons, forks, chips, party hats, chip bowl, and happy birthday sign that also blow up along with the three chairs and table itself. Periodically the pump would go off and the artwork’s second phase would be  its collapse, then back on again after 15 minutes down. The main theme of this piece had to do with expectation and disillusionment. Just like hosting a well prepared birthday party and then no one comes, (or perhaps they don’t come in the beginning causing brief moments of panic and disappointment). Or a having a children’s pool party and then it rains all that day. Birthdays are one day a year and hold so much expectation and significance it is interesting to isolate this idea, remove it’s colorful associated decoration but still keep its temporal nature. It is these bittersweet moments in life, that interest me.

January 2011

Participating in the 10^th annual Oude Kerk Exhibition in Amsterdam. I created an exact replica of the church chair (pew) in the old church made completely out of hollow white paper. I placed the chair in the middle of the active church, even while the weekend service took place people avoided sitting on it. However much to my pleasure, someone finally did end up sitting on it and breaking it.

December 2010

A documentation of an art performance on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam Dec 2010, This is an addition to my umbrella series. Umbrella Eyes watching. Originally I have several transparent balloons which I handed out to passerbys as a positive action from the ground but from above it looks like tears moving down. This was a large fail though because of the snowy weather, lack of people congestion, and the balloons virtually disappearing because of their transparency. Something I will have to try again.

November 2010

A piece made for the ‘Uncut’ group exhibition in the Brakke Grond in Amsterdam (curated by Maze De Boer). Together, Ayumi Suzuki and I form the collective Miami Beach and Toyko Peach. With the theme of ‘Past Present and Future’ we took over the gallery’s four white wall space with two 6 meter tall blow up figures and hooked them up on remotes to inflate and disinflate. The man and woman are Abraham and Sarah, symbolic puppets used to signify turning 50 in Holland. We compressed them in the space as they softly breathed and towered over people.

This is an article about the exhibition in the Kunstbeeld (In Dutch)

October 2010

Unfold asked me to make the poster for their October issue of any upcoming event in Amsterdam and I chose Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti concert happening in the Bitterzoet October 17th. I love everything  about Ariel Pink’s music and steez so it was a no brainer. The main idea was wanting to make a poster that was visible both vertically and horizontally and of course in my tradition to not use photoshop. So I made a whole kind of haunted house set of a paper couch, table and lamp on the wall and cliche’ blood dripping in pink with a giant cross stitch. Then I activated it with my “Ghost” Ayumi Suzuki & Billy the Dog having them jump in the air reminiscent of this Dali portrait Atomicus where they all jump in the air and the moment is just captured as if they were floating (*instead of water we threw strawberry milk). The last idea was that it worked both as a poster and a video. I want to give credit, thanks and much much love to: Ayumi Suzuki, Wendy Tjon a Hie, Steve Korver, Elmer Ko, Caetano Carvalho & Billy the dog for making this shoot so effing incredibly fun and thanks to Steven McCarron & Russell Joyce for the gig! So click here for My Round N Round video/or see a small version below:

Click to experience our interactive project here: —>Untitled-1.swf

and Here’s the issue of Trickhouse: —>Trickhouse

July 2010

A flash work made for the website Trickhouse, curated by Shayna Schapp. Ayumi Suzuki and I were asked to play with the idea of being Translocal. We held a virtual conversation on a “table” between Amsterdam and Tokyo. We created an interactive table for the web, a space where much like a real table, it embodies the idea of getting together, sharing thoughts, meeting, and eating. This table’s conversation however, is done without language where instead the objects spoke our own momentary memory associations through videos both found and made. By having others click the objects, they participate in and activate our dialog through their own curiosity. This is an area of interest to us, communication with video and stimulating more complicated layers through seemingly simple objects. After numerous collaborations together Ayumi & I decided to officially announce our collabo name, “Miami Beach Tokyo Peach” (when she says it with her heavy Japanese accent, it sounds suitingly enough like Miami Bitch and Tokyo Pitch).

June 2010

Readdressing the realistic Lazy boy paper chair I did in New York 2009, I wanted to make more Dutch style paper chairs. I made six traditional looking paper chairs this time, only one of them was real. Wanting people to sit down on them and get passed their initial reservations of thinking they might fall, I set up a performance where only one person sat on the real chair and others curious of how that worked would sit on the others only to fall and leave their human stain on it.

May 2010

I was getting too sweet in my art works and needed something a little nastier to balance me out. Car crashes are so surreal. It’s unbelievable to see an object so sturdy as a car crushed up like a thin piece of paper to become something so abstract. I wanted the challenge of painting a real car that became abstract, realistically in one color of watercolor. They are 1 meter x 1.40 meter on thick creme paper.

March 2010

A complex piece where Ayumi Suzuki, Akiko Wakabayashi, and I became fascinated with a crappy webcam on the internet called “DonnieCam” showing a view of  a street corner in Amsterdam (live 24 hours a day). donniecam.html We wanted to infiltrate its power, use that view as if it were our own stage, and communicate with the big brother(s) watching it. We chose to make daily performances for one week on that street corner, writing enormous messages with chalk communicating with Donnie (and at the same time to all the other viewers that visit the website). “Hi Donnie are you there?” or “I am watching you” for example (the above picture is a compilation of our text).

We then took all the footage of our performances and made our own DonnieCam Website with almost the same look as the original which just looped the recorded video of our graffiti messages on the street. Making it seem like you were looking at what was happening in Amsterdam live but instead just watching our performance over and over again. A way of making our own permanent gallery. Also a way of giving homage to Donnie Cam.

You can check the site we made: donnicam.html

*This is a compilation of the video in the site:

February 2010

Realizing the fantasy of a more analog world where little people are inside running a television, working hard, taking breaks, and never really stopping. The Color Bar comes to life with costumes and simple choreography of turning on and off the television. Evolving around four stages starting with a black screen, to a star burst of electricity when you click a tv on, to static, to eventually a color bar that bleeps until voices can hold it no more. This project is meant to be viewed on an actual television, and so it will be broadcasted all over Amsterdam on AT5 in late September in the wee hours of the night. A special Thanks to Esper, Kristinn, Ayumi, Steve, Frederic, Kathrin, & Idsy for your pure comedic genius.

December 2009

A part two to my first Umbrella work in Amsterdam. Still observing how people walk this time in New York City and using that as inspiration to create this piece. The aggressiveness and differences in heights in New York City pedestrians makes walking on a rainy day seam like flowing on some turbulent waves of ocean, and all I wanted to do while watching it, was to sail it. So I picked up some broken umbrellas around the city and sculpted three large clipper ships, then I got 16 fantastic people together, several different shades of blue umbrellas and we sailed the New York streets. (I really want to thank all the people that participated again! You guys are stellar!)

November 2009

Thanksgiving on a farm in Pennsylvania and it’s a vegetarian dinner. What do we do? I had each of the ten people eating that night sit individually with me as I molded mashed potato sculptures of their heads. Then someone sculpted my head and we baked all of our mini-heads in the oven, served them on our plates, and then went around the table saying something we loved about ourselves then proceeded to eat our heads. A narcissistic Thanksgiving was born.