Sidney at the Pink

By Japanzine Staff

OK, so it's a January event, but what are the chances of you dragging your sorry behind as far as a Japanzine outlet in time to read up on this little gem? The funkiest art bar in town has teamed up with one of Japan's most inspirational gaijin artists to create an alternative reality that I, for one, would happily live in.

Sidney Pink has been living and drawing in Japan since arriving here in 2004. Until then, he'd enjoyed a career in theater, most recently assisting the managing director at Woolly Mammoth Theater company in Washington D.C. "I loved the variety of work that the job offered," he explains. "One day of work might include hanging theatrical lights, working on fundraising, designing a theatre poster, and working in the box office."

Despite settling comfortably into a life amongst thesps, Sidney's background was in Fine Art. He sat his degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and it was to art that he returned when his wife took a teaching position in Japan. To pay the bills, Pink found subsitute work at the same school, where the part-time hours gave him flexibility to surrender to the creative urges when they came. Considering that his up-and-coming exhibition will feature over 40 pieces, we can assume  he's had little time for anything else.

"It was an amazing experience to leave Maryland and come to Japan," he says. "I had traveled very little up until that point in my life, and the culture shock was both exhilarating and shocking. I found that just living in Japan was a huge influence on my work. I find visual inspiration in the graphics and signs; in the ways that people interact; in the ways that people stand on the train or wait at a crosswalk."

One inspriation that stands out particularly is fashion, though it's not the kind of thing that lights the editorial fires over at Vogue Japan. While his contemporaries pick up on the manga aspects of this country, Pink litters his drawings with the mundane. Regular salarymen and school girls turn up in many drawings, though their actions are far from normal. From sketch to sketch, you may find a troop of gakkusei staring at you from behind 3D shades, or perhaps an officebody free-falling through emptiness. "At university I became interested in creating work that implied another reality or world," Pink notes. "It's a theme that has influenced a lot of my work."

THE VOSTOK 40: Drawings by Sidney Pink, will be exhibited at The Pink Cow, Shibuya, between January 4th and 31st, 2008. The opening party is on the 6th, kicking off at 7pm. For further information, check the Pink Cow website at www.thepinkcow.com, or the artist's website at www.sidneypink.com

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