ART DESCRIPTION
This is a playful work that expressed Barry Kamen’s love for Japan. The work uses acrylic paint with a collage of newsprint paper and a painted adhesive plaster in acrylic paint. The wordplay on ‘Saiko’, which in English sounds like ‘psycho’, references a track from 1977 by the band Talking Heads called ‘Psycho Killer’. This is combined with the word ‘Killer’ in newsprint collage, which was a word with its origins in the UK’s Buffalo movement meaning cool, ultimately stylish, cutting-edge. The word ‘Saiko’ in Japanese of course means the best, the coolest. The juxtaposition of the two words is a high compliment, meaning that Japan is the coolest of the cool, the most stylish place, the most creative.
Barry Kamen has a long and rich legacy of working in Japan, having worked with Rei Kawakubo for Commes des Garçons in 1985, collaborating with her for two seasons, producing sketches and design material. During this time, Barry walked for Commes des Garçons on the catwalk with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Barry also began in 1984 a strong creative alliance with designer and pioneer Takeo Kikuchi, working with him on many collections until 2015.
This work is from the ‘Is Is It’ series of 2006-2011.
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