Astro Boys Unite

“Takashi Murakami is an old man,” says painter Tim Evans of the only animé painter/sculptor anyone has ever heard of. “There are so many of us all over the States and Japan that grew up with Astro Boy and have been working with images like these, but all people know about is that sculpture where the milk is shooting out of that girl’s tits, the only good thing he’s ever done.”

Tim makes his money four days a week restoring old paintings. He works for Sotheby’s and Christie’s and The Met filling in the holes of antiquated portraits and dark gray landscapes made by prehistoric British people. The rest of his time is spent distorting traditional Japanese animation and Internet porn (check richards-realm and tommys-bookmarks) into scary pictures that give pubescent boys jerk-off nightmares. After touring around Tokyo two years ago, Evans was shocked to meet dozens of other people frustrated with the medium. “I thought I was the only one bummed out with the state of everything but I kept meeting people doing amazing stuff. Really incredible, dangerous stuff.” As in America, Japanese galleries aren’t interested in this kind of illustration unless Murakami drew it, and even then they want it as banal and cutesy as possible, but behind the scenes there is a whole pressure group of imagery waiting to escape.

Evans met so many people like him on his tour that he is putting together a traveling art show over the next few months. There will be 15 Americans and 15 Japanese all doing the same thing. The artists are way scarier than Murakami on brown acid could ever be. They are influenced by movies like the ultra-twisted Gasarki or Lain, the story of a little girl who gets lost in a Tron-like computer world. They all worship the Japanese 60s psychedelic fanzine Garo and they all hate galleries.

“I had been struggling with galleries and having trouble with the whole schmoozing thing,” he says. “I don’t want to be there for the opening, you know what I mean? There’s a whole generation of artists that feel the same way and we’re finally getting a chance to do something about it.”

MARKY SPENSE

See more Time Evans at www.rockstarpark.com