AKI TORII <3 TAD SARE

27 FEBRUARY 2010

Written by CAMILLE NAVARRO

       I must admit, Aki and Tad are friends of mine. They also happen to be married. They also happen to be a couple of kick ass artists, concentrating on bending minds and associating things that don’t usually mingle as part of their artworks. While they are all cute and love each other and stuff, collaborating is off limits. Living together is one thing, working together is another – both have evolved in different ways as artists and are too stubborn to bend their ideas to fit together. In the artistic arena, they work alone.

LADIES FIRST > AKI TORII

“I work with variety of media. Most of the time, I use any material as long as it fits with the content of my work. I am interested in making logic out of illogic, and recreating a new meaning by combining all sorts of unassociated meanings. In my work, I re-analyze a case with a completely unrelated measuring device/means.” – Aki
 

Installation view (outsideinside) [2010]               

Part of the fun of Aki’s work is her childlike character. If you ever meet her in person, prepare to be stunned into rosy cheeks. She is cute with all the cute you can be cute with. Likewise, her installment entitled Toilet Confession Room makes me think of kid logic. Often children will watch something happen, think about it logically, and come to completely different conclusions than adults, some of which are ticklishly delightful. Aki’s Toilet Confession Room is a new twist on religious confession, minus the priest with bad breath. She illustrates the technique with very careful instructions: First, you must think of your sin. Then you go into the toilet confession room, wash your hands well (it is a spiritual place, after all), and write your sin on a piece of toilet paper. Finally, throw your sin into the toilet and flush. This releases the sin from your mind and ejects it into the unknown, where it is no longer your problem. Ingenious, no?
 

Instructional Poster-Toilet Confession Room [2010]               

 Process of Earning Temporary Happiness [2010]               

Aki’s art is not simply a cool poster with instructions on it, it is the art of action. It is the art of brain manipulation. Would you ever have thought of that on your own? One of the best parts of the whole thing is that it is presented to you as an instruction manual – “Do this, and it will cause you to feel this” – which is quite often exactly how people expect to live. Aki takes this idea and turns it on situations that we do not usually plug into the ‘A leads to B’ formula. In this case, ‘write your sin and flush it down the toilet so you will receive temporary happiness’ puts two usually unrelated things together, and Aki fills in the gap that explains their connection. The result is some fun brain fireworks, and a chance to reflect on how we come to our conclusions.
 

Pen, writing sin is an Act of Redemption [2010]               

In March, Aki will be participating in a new show at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia called Masturbation.

http://www.toriiaki.com
 

EVER A GENTLEMAN > TAD SARE

“I hope in the near future that we hear of Michael Jackson sightings the way we have heard of Elvis sightings in the past. I'm working on that.” - Tad
 

 Colliding Conspiracy (installation view) [2010]               

Tad Sare has taken the conspiracy theory to a new, artistic level. In his project entitled Colliding Conspiracies, he attempts to connect a number of conspiracies and (hopefully) create a few new ones. In this work, he makes the viewer feel like he or she has stumbled upon someone’s nicotine-stained obsessive basement project, with pictures hung against the wall in a line with clothespins – Clint Eastwood leading to Bigfoot, Bigfoot leading to the Paul McCartney Death Hoax, etc. These images create such a mind-numbing jumble of what-ifs that it makes you want to throw your hands up and yell “I don’t know what’s real anymore!” This is exactly what Tad is going for. He wants people to consider how the big ‘Other’ out there is obscuring our interpretations of society and history (and everything else, for that matter!). This is both a fun and frightening undertaking.
 

  Colliding Conspiracy (installation view) [2010]               

Tad creates his own images, either constructing them from scratch or appropriating them from outside sources and putting them into a new and original context. This specific series of photos was inspired by a conspiracy outlined by Peter Blake about the Paul McCartney Death Hoax and his ‘replacement’ Billy Shears/Sheppard. (Go to here to learn more about it – I looked at it and it is both totally creepy and completely fascinating. This guy has put in a LOT of work). Tad has also taken some inspiration from the Antonioni film "Blow Up," which tells the adventure of an angry young British photographer who thinks he has photographed a murder. He becomes obsessed with the photo and continues to 'blow it up' and re-examine and interpret the image. Tad has staged his own similar photo with references to Paul McCartney, Bigfoot, Clint Eastwood, and Michael Jackson in order to connect them visually in people’s minds.
 

 Colliding Conspiracy (installation view) [2010]               

  Colliding Conspiracy (installation view)[2010]               

This project definitely speaks to another era, a time when intimidating government agents in black and international spies ran amok, and grainy black and white photos ruled the collective imagination of a culture and its media. However, it also carries a sort of second-generational quality that invites interpretation and reflection, opening up new associations and comparisons to our own society. Now if that doesn’t give you the chills, I don’t know what would.