CHINATSU BAN!!!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! I'm saving my pennies for a plane ticket to Fort Worth.

The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX
FOCUS: Chinatsu Ban
December 3, 2006–January 28, 2007

Chinatsu Ban's most common motif is the elephant, which symbolizes a number of things to the artist, including safety and salvation. In 2005 Ban was included in the major exhibition Little Boy, hosted by the Japan Society Gallery and organized by the important Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. With Little Boy, Murakami explored the phenomenon known as otaku, which, now globalized, began as a Japanese youth subculture fixated on science fiction; fantasy; video games; comic books, known as manga; and animation, known as anime.

A young artist among those who explore otaku, Ban was born in 1973 and lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. She has been making art since 1997, and has continued to develop her unique aesthetic style, creating both paintings and sculpture of irresistibly cute figures, including generically rendered elephants with no mouths, in bright colors and often wearing girls' undergarments. While there is a definite personal and psychological edge to Ban's work, her paintings and sculpture undeniably operate within the realm of kawaii, the Japanese word for cute, which is also seen in such popular figures as Hello Kitty. FOCUS: Chinatsu Ban is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.