Sush Machida Gaikotsu
Tiger, 2007
Acrylic on panel
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of the Las Vegas Art Museum, 2021; Gift of an anonymous donor, 2008
2021.08.151

“Creating beauty and finding beauty are really important to me,” Sush Machida told CMH magazine in 2009. He mingles motifs from both Japan and America to create a third place derived from his personal fantasies: an independent landscape of bright colours, springy curved lines, action, humor, fishing, and toys. His style is often compared to American pop art, but he points out that “In Japan’s art world, painting pop culture is not a new thing, it is an old thing. Andy Warhol started in the 1960s, the Japanese started in the 16th century–patterns, logos of department stores and woodblock prints—I guess that is in my DNA.” By frequently using art-historical references and brands rather than realistic images, he asserts the power of his imagination to turn artificiality into a new reality. (The banana in Tiger is doubly removed from the reality of an actual banana, since it is not only an artwork by Andy Warhol, but also the cover picture from The Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut album.) “My culture—street culture, skaters’ culture—is about graphics, graffiti, tattoos and things like that,” he said to CMH. “I deal with traditional Japanese subject matter—tigers, dragons, flowers, waves and wind. Using old subject matter and making it new is really challenging.” Machida has described the feeling of being slightly removed from the mainstream as an essential part of his artmaking, drawing parallels with his status as both an artist and an Asian in the United States.

Item description: A long, vertical painting of a stylized tiger glaring down at a mouse sitting on its tail as it climbs up a cloud outlined in red. Above the tiger’s outstretched paw in the top left corner is a banana, a tattoo gun, the initials “SMG” in a red, wide, slab-like font with pointed projections, and a yellow flower. The top of the painting is dark gray and decorated with yellow dots while the bottom is lighter gray and speckled with tiny birds, green tree air fresheners, starburst shapes, and a dragon.