Usugrow

'SHINGANIST'

Usugrow hails from Japan and has brought to London his fresh take on stark black and white illustrations. His detailing is phenomenal and his finished pieces ooze a dark style rarely seen in the UK. Once again, the ever-excellent Stolen Space Gallery played host to Usugrow's touring show, "Shinganist" last month and with four other Japanese artists in tow, the show proved to be a real success. Their traditional processes and mindsets of painting were like a breath of fresh air and I personally gained a newfound respect for Asian artists. I believe that the name Usugrow will be seen and heard for many years to come.

- What was the starting point for you in art?

U: At the beginning, I started designing event flyers and posters as I was originally playing in a punk band. When we would go on tour around Japan, people really liked the artwork I was producing and thats how my work spread originally. From there. I started to do record cover designs for other bands and actually worked less and less for my own band. For me, it wasn't really an 'art-based' job, it was more about me designing for other people.

- Around that time, what kind of works were you producing?

U: Pretty much the same, but it was more interesting work then, compared to now. Normally, when you think of a punk rock design, it usually consists of skulls and other dark themes and I wanted to try and stay away from those aesthetics. So I would draw more traditional Japanese themed work instead, like using Buddha within my design. When people started to incorporate the same themes as me in their designs, I once again, tried to move away from that. I actually started using more horror-style themes and tried to evolve my characters into things like cockroaches.

About 5 or 6 years ago, I was finally able to create my own style of skull as I was practicing all the time. It's hard to come up with your own original take on the skull aesthetic and if you are not careful, your skulls can end up looking a lot like other people's characters.

- What's your reason for only using black and white in your designs?

U: When I was making event flyers, I didn't have the resources to make colour copies of my work. I had to use a black and white copier instead and I found that I couldn't make the classic gradation between colours. However, it taught me to utilise dots in my work in order to make my own form of gradation. If you use dots properly, it's actually possible to make perfect gradation for copiers and silk screen prints. So I basically had to adapt my art due to my limited resources that I had available to me.

- How about your use of Typography?

U: I was influenced by many different styles of script, from Arabic, Korean to Roman Alphabets. One thing that is interesting about typography is that people's styles are totally affected by the tools that they use to make it. For example, Japanese and Chinese script uses a brush, whereas the Roman Alphabet script is traditionally created using a hard point and ink, typically a quill. When I use typography, I tend to use a brush pen and for my artwork, I will use a thin Rotring pen.

- Tell us about the process you employ to create your artwork.

U: I will spend a long time to complete one piece without doing any rough sketch. Instead I will take my time and be really focused on each section of the work. Even though I do gallery shows quite often, a lot of my time and work is spent doing graphic and product design. Even this time, for the London show, half of my work is made exclusively for London and the other half was made for various graphic jobs. For me, it's the same as I'm making artwork, but its original purpose may have originally been for a graphic job. That's definitely one thing that makes me slightly different from the traditional artist who shows at a gallery.

For product design jobs, I mainly do t-shirts or skateboards for clients. I will paint it by hand and then scan it to make the digital version. I used to get someone to help me with the digital aspects, but I would end up having disagreements on colour schemes and so decided to work alone.

- What concepts are you trying to achieve when creating your artwork?

U: I try to finish my work to as perfect a standard as possible. For example, in music, if you are involved in a compilation project, some people may submit crappy tracks that you don't want in the album and I don't want to be one of these people. I have a responsibility to myself and my clients and viewers to make the work perfect.

I get my inspiration from many different fields, like fashion photography. Many people are involved in the creative process, from the make-up artists, models, photographers to digital re-touchers and I like how they can all work together to create one single beautiful image. However, I also like the flip-side of this creative process, when the work is done by just one person. We have a saying in Japan that states, "When you are trying to define a shadow, you must try and define its lightness."

- What is the Shinganist book and show about?

U: I chose 4 artists to collaborate and release a book and do some touring shows with them. Their work has really strong character and I really like it. What I like about them is that they all employ the traditional sense of Japanese painting techniques. What I mean to say is that they all tend to 'subtract' parts of their work from the final piece instead of 'adding' more and more to the finished work. This is a process that is deep rooted in traditional Japanese painting and it's great to work with young people who are trying to apply this process to their work. They all come from different backgrounds, like tattooing, graffiti and graphic design but they are trying to push the boundaries and not be categorised into one genre. They all have a responsibility and are wiling to be risk-takers and do something interesting. Each artist section in the book was designed by the artists themselves and I found this to be really interesting, as you could see their various ideas and visions manifested on the pages of Shinganist.

- Are there any future plans you can tell us about?

U: I am interested to continue working on my art for the foreseeable future and also start looking at trying to make documentary film too. I would like to make a film that documents certain artists from the artists point of view. I am interested to understand and observe how they see things and how they act differently from a regular person. This will allow me to compare them to myself and the way I interact with the world and I think that this will help me to further develop my own train of creative thought.

Usugrow : www.usugrow.com

Written by Irie

Translated by Selph