Kustom Kulture is not a world for purists. It's where 1950s style pinstriping (the art of custom-painting designs on cars, a la Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Von Dutch, and Robert Williams), garden-variety rebels, surf rockers, skate punks, tattoo designs, monster imagery and voluptuous pinups collide.
So seeing the Japanese take on Kustom Kulture -- an apparently healthy subculture in that country -- hardly moves one to think that the art form has been co-opted. If anything, they've added to the lexicon of the language with their own iconography, vision and humor.
A major promoter of this "Kustom Kulture" is Tokyo's Nash Yoshi, the linchpin in the Burnout Network -- a group of Kustom Kulture enthusiasts (check out www.detroitjunk.com -- even if you don't read Japanese, the images are pretty cool).
Yoshi (who goes by Nash) became really interested with the Kustom Kulture world about 10 years ago and never looked back. He runs a shop in Tokyo, publishes Burnout magazine and curates shows with a roster of artists.
One such artist is Makoto, a soft-spoken fellow from Okazaki, Aichi (a city halfway between Tokyo and Osaka), whose art is an appealing mixture of American pop culture and traditional Japanese symbols. For example, he paints hot-rod pinstripes onto maneki neko -- cat figurines typically seen in banks and other commercial businesses in Japan. The "fortune cats" typically have one front leg raised with the paw curled under and in, as if to draw in business.
He also has a series of six paintings in which the automobile plays second fiddle to the pinstriping. Makoto painted these softly washed images of mighty, muscular cars and engines on canvas, then in the foreground, on top of Plexiglas, he's pinstriped patterns that visually pop. Beautiful, sure strokes build patterns that could exist on someone's bicep as easily as atop the hood of a car.
Another artist, Mr. G, creates Tiki-inspired works that nod to the surf-rock influence on Kustom Kulture. He's a full-time pinstriper who creates art on the side, producing images of the sun, surf, babes and Tiki gods. He encountered this particular flavor while vacationing with his family in Hawaii five years ago. The 35-year-old, who lives in the more tropical part of Japan (on Fukuoka, Kyushu), instantly took to the style.
Grimb, another popular Kustom Kulture artist, creates works that are far more intense where angels and demons reign supreme, as do mixed images of the mechanic and the visceral. In one piece, an exhaust pipe and syringe pierce a heart, in another, a pair of hands, in prayer position, cradle a piston.
"You're right, it's heavy, but I never thought of it that way," said Grimb. "I just use what inspires me." He's sure inspired by tattoo art, and he admits to being a bit of an enthusiast. Grimb, 27, points to his shoulders when asked if he has any tattoos. "My parents only know of the first few," he admits sheepishly. Yes, the older generation in Japan still associates tattoos with Yakuza (Japanese gang, mafia, etc.).
Then again, these guys don't seem to shy away from their outsider status -- neither as artists nor as members of a culture that prizes uniformity above almost all else.
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