Tokyo-born but now based in Kyoto, multimedia artist Wataru Komachi has frequently collaborated and interacted with the realms of fashion and music, and his creative vision is heavily influenced by urban culture and consumerism. Komachi engages in various techniques, such as collage, painting and photography, morphing daily waste and discarded goods into visually tantalising installations, such as the current one at OVERGROUND gallery in Fukuoka. To Komachi, his artworks and installations are ‘Holy Grails’. The solo exhibition, entitled Fisher King, is inspired by British film director Terry Gilliam‘s eponymous film which was first released in 1991. The film is about a radio DJ Jack Lucas who quickly gains notoriety for his sharp tongue on his show, but eventually caused a shooting incident because of it. After the incident, Lucas leaves the radio station feeling guilty and becoming an alcoholic.
Later on, he meets a strange homeless man named Henry ‘Parry’ Sagan who dresses as a medieval knight. Parry had a mental breakdown due to an accident and believes that he was a knight with a noble mission to recover the Holy Grail. After hearing Parry’s story, the DJ feels a sense of destiny in their unusual interaction. Together, they search for the Holy Grail that’s in Parry’s mind, becoming more or less like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Parry believed that the Holy Grail was something insignificant to most people, something they yearned for from the bottom of their hearts through extremely honest, pure, and noble behaviour. Usually, everything we see with our eyes is organised in the subconscious and also embedded in standard values. Fantasy and reality are two sides of the coin. This exhibition allows viewers an attempt to finding the Holy Grail within themselves (on through Jun 25).
OVERGROUND
1-17-5 Minoshima, Second Floor (Hakata)
Fukuoka 812-0017
Telephone: +81 92 9840896
Thu-Sun 1pm-7pm
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
