"In a modern society like ours, where the melting pot sees lines blurred between cultures, artist Gajin Fujita offers a counter melting pot by serving up a distinct blend of his two cultures: a mix of graffiti from East L.A. and traditional Japanese woodblock prints from Far East."
Interview: Dana Sunshine, "Gajin Fujita". NYFA Interactive (originally published at TheArtBiz.com).
Shelley Leopold, "Native-san", LA Weekly, "LA People 2007" issue, May 11-17, 2007.
Exhibitions
"Gajin Fujita" (Venice, Calif., L.A. Louver Art Gallery, November 18-December 30, 2006)
"L.A. Louver is delighted to present a long-anticipated exhibition of new paintings by Japanese-American artist Gajin Fujita. These increasingly sophisticated works reflect many cultural influences, including the lush visuals of traditional Japanese tattoos, screen painting from the Edo period, woodblock prints by ukiyo-e artists and contemporary Japanese cartoons. Fujita continues to juxtapose Japanese imagery and painting techniques with contemporary themes and spray painted graffiti, often inviting former members of his tagging crew to contribute text to the paintings."
"Zephyr: Paintings by Gajin Fujita" (Kansas City, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, September 8-November 5, 2006)
"Zephyr is the first major solo museum exhibition of the provocative and visually stunning work of the acclaimed young Los Angeles artist Gajin Fujita. His paintings are elaborate fusions of contemporary urban street life and traditional Japanese iconography. The past and present, high art and pop culture, and Eastern and Western aesthetics exist in harmony in Fujita’s paintings, demonstrating the artist’s masterful ability to create visual metaphors for today’s global hybridized society."
"In Fujita’s vibrant paintings and drawings, the mixture of Japanese anime, figures derived from traditional Asian woodblock prints, and graffiti results in surprising and evocative works that embody the contradictions of culture and class inherent in urban Los Angeles."
Excerpt: "This is the first solo show for Fujita, an Otis undergrad and University of Nevada MFA. Fujita’s parents came here from Japan after World War II. He grew up in the mostly Latino Boyle Heights, exposed to East L.A.’s gang culture with a mom and a dad well versed in art. There is enough in that sentence to fuel someone of his innate gifts and curiosity for a career. Fujita may be the ultimate double outsider: an Asian in the barrio, being a minority with its own weighty stereotypes in the broader American context, the butting up of high and low culture in his house, East vs West aesthetic identification, exposure to street art counterpointed with a Mom who is a conservator of classical Japanese prints, the pallor of the Marshall Plan designed to homogenize and export Americana. What came out of this mix is almost predictable, but not in a bad way. Fujita makes otherwise predictable dichotomies effectively syncretic."