Misaki Kawai

Photo by Peter Sutherland

Misaki Kawai has a motorized “pet” cat with matted taupe fur and plastic blue eyes that meows and moves its head. She strokes its fur and, like a doting mother, she knows its gamut of meows, from angry to content.

She explains that she really wanted a pet, but she travels too much to care for one. There’s something not altogether right with the image of a grown woman enamored of a mechanical cat, but that complete immersion into a bewildering fictional world is part of the same creative spirit that infuses Kawai’s art.

G-String Riders Courtesy of Misaki Kawai/Clementine Gallery

Her work appears playful and naïve. “Tiger Punch” at the Clementine Gallery in New York City (January 2007) mostly showed paintings and flat cardboard figures composed in bright neon colors, dripping with evidence of the artist’s hand: glue globs, uneven surfaces, smeared paint. Her detailed installations have a homemade aesthetic: scraps of fabric sewn together to create entire miniature worlds. She explains, “Basically I like that handmade feel, it’s very warm. Like when you’re little, your mom or grandma makes clothes [for you].”

Image Courtesy of Misaki Kawai

But it’s not all cozy knit sweaters and cute baby animals. A dark humor is shot through her work, representations of the vaguely obscene filtered through a child’s undiscerning eyes. In G-String Riders, voluptuous women ride bicycles, their juicy asses spilling over the seats. Spider Kiss shows a blue-haired woman in the classic taking-a-dump-in-the-woods crouch, butt bare to the wind. A striped spider takes the opportunity to bite her in the ass. Clouds of farts and scenes of violence show up in equal measure. Kawai explains the disturbing thread that belies the work’s cheerful aspect, “Some art may be very cute. It’s easy for people to love it, but it’s a little bit empty, it’s easy. Nothing sticks in your head or your heart. Same thing with [art that is overtly] bad or sad. I like to have a balance.”

Spider Kiss

Kawai’s work is weird and funny, kind of like her fake pet cat. And the humor is crucial to her. Her art career began in grade school, doodling funny pictures to make her friends laugh. Osaka, where Kawai spent her youth, is “the center of comedy in Japan… Even when my family or my friends are talking, it has to be funny.” It’s clear that this sprightly and self-effacing artist has carefully considered her humorous dishabille. Judging from her reviews and international following—Japan, Italy, Sweden, for a start—it has been effective. She was chosen for P.S.1/MoMA’s Greater New York Show in 2005, and the New York Times called her 2003 debut a “tour-de-force.” As her career grows and her travel schedule includes evermore time spent in evermore cities, perhaps she’ll get other mechanical substitutions for the other living figures in her life.