Esm-artificial.com
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esm-artificial.com
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English
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Kenn 'ESM-artificial' Sakurai Pop-culture satirist Kenn Sakurai (ESM-Artificial) whips up mass-produced and one-of-a-kind silk-screened work that touches upon some of the best and the worst aspects of American and world culture that often include models, cars, rock stars, song lyrics, the 80s, and television personalities. Always humorous, poignant, and thoughtful, his work also delves into other universal themes such as heartbreak and high school.
Sakurai fuses text with image and popular culture to catch the viewer's attention. His work contains notions of questioning commodity, advertising, and the bombardment of images the public receives daily for movies, music, fashion, and television. Through the hundreds of serigraph images he creates in his studio (on postcard sets, prints, stickers, etc.) he's fueling the globalization of American culture. And, just as Warhol addressed issues of fame and identity through repeated imagery, while at the same time reducing the subject, he also uses images of celebrity (the Rock, Martha Stewart, Milla Jovovich, etc.) to grab us and make us see something deeper than we usually do. In fact, he's so good at poking fun of consumerism and the media that even the most jaded person must laugh at the ridiculousness.
Hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, this Canadian graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1999. He's been included in exhibitions in New York (8 1/2 x 11 at the 55DSL Flagship store), Washington, California (Tee Time and Otaku!), Illinois, Vancouver, United Kingdom (Stick 'Em Up), France (Surface to Air and Hello Kissy Prints at Colette) and Sweden (Postcards from Home). Articles about Sakurai have been featured in Adbusters, Elle, Architectural Record, Western Living, Spruce, Studio Voice, Vancouver Sun, and Lola Magazine.
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