“This work is the theme of Japanese identity. While feeling that Japanese are losing confidence, where is Japan’s identity? What is the universal value that Japan can transmit to the world? Elements of Japan’s identity such as Japanese traditional beauty, future technology, Japanism, etc. were pursued and integrated by members and collaboration members of kuwahara hiroto, Paul Lacroix, and Jin Hasegawa.
Finally, when Android face transforms, grotesque dark mask appears from inside. It seems that it is a metaphor for a strange anxiety towards the future brought about by technology that continues to evolve at phenomenal speed.”
2016. video (color, sound), media player, screen or projector, 18 min loop
Disco Beast follows a psychedelic unicorn as it wanders through a series of empty commercial spaces, including an abandoned shopping mall and a luxury hotel lobby. The work references both medieval iconography of a unicorn in captivity and its appearance in popular culture to build a new mythology about modern confinement by technology and materialism. This symbol of otherworldliness and the unobtainable in discord with banal, corporate spaces in the piece elicits subconscious anxieties surrounding globalization and consumerism.
We have not touched the deeply intriguing and mesmerizing world of the Residents yet here on dpv, since usually psychedelia is only one component in their surreal and absurdist multimedia art. Nevertheless, I think you will enjoy the Gingerbread Man short film.
Out of the Abyss combines imagery from modern consumerism with symbols and narratives associated with the Apocalypse. Visually extravagant, the work re-imagines elements such as the seven-eyed lamb and the four horsemen as terrifying beasts of the present day, adorned with security cameras, riot gear, and consumer electronics. The work suggests an unsustainable and fraught relationship between technology and materialism, and the natural world.
The Daily Psychedelic Video 