ALIEN POP

Chinatown Soup is delighted to present Alien Pop, an exhibition of acrylic paintings and hand-painted zines by our new friend SIMON in collaboration with our long-time friends at Clear Gallery Tokyo. Please join us for an after hours reception on Thursday, March 3rd from 6-8pm. SIMON’s work will be on view through March 13th.

Do aliens have pronouns? This is a question that polite society of present day Japan would refrain from entertaining. Growing up in cosmopolitan Tokyo presented a surprising challenge to SIMON’S imaginative curiosity. Raised by a single father, SIMON was left to his own devices from an early age and found it difficult to relate with schoolmates who often teased him for having feminine sensibilities. SIMON’S aptitude for painting became his primary outlet of self-expression, and, as fate would have it, his father’s best friend who identified as transgender became an ally to SIMON throughout the process of refining his creative practice into an art form.

The cuteness of SIMON’s aliens contain a teachable shadow. In the manufacturing industry, for example, the psychology of cuteness derives beyond aesthetics insofar as it is deployed to attract an individual by eliciting obsessive attention. At the macro level, aggressive aspects of so-called progressive culture inculcate dogmatic fixation with surface features that, perhaps antithetically, result in alienating humans from one another. Aliens of SIMON’s universe are not limited by gender or physical characteristics and seek to benefit anybody who feels marginalized in the broader context of societal relations. SIMON conveys how the word ‘Alien’ may be re-appropriated to acknowledge our inherent capacity for Love, aligning Ego with Self- Esteem.

The characters brought to life by SIMON’S brush are more than “Souper 可愛い!” (“Kawaii”), they represent the heart and spirit of a sweet, sensitive artist whose talent and capacity for friendship saved his life.

Simon (b. 1997) is a Tokyo-born, Fukuoka City-based illustrator, painter, and print-maker creating a next wave manga multiverse known as ‘Alien-chan’. Simon began developing this unique subgenre at the age of 14 when enrolled at the Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture. Influenced by the work of modern manga writing duo Fujiko F. Fujio and articulated sculptor Simon Yotsuya (“the God of doll-making”), he channeled his preteen obsession with Sanrio and Disney characters into a futuristic fantasy realm that remixes Japanese Pop of the 1990’s with contemporary modes. Simon’s embrace of analog and digital mediums coincides with his fixation on dissolving socio-cultural boundaries related to national and transgender identities, which remain tabu subjects at dinner tables throughout his homeland.