000090 - kozyndan @ outre (melb)

kozyndan are an art couple from LA. many of their illustrations are intricately detailed or have a whole subliminal layer of different meaning to them if you looked ever so closely. some of their artwork are darn right strange like their kin-san's business trip panorama full of japanese salarymen in school girl uniforms! while others are iconic like uprising, a homage of sort to the famous hokusai woodblock painting but with a kozyndan twist.

i first noticed their work on the cover of a magazine called giant robot with the above uprising illustration by never really noted whom they were. later i saw more of their artwork at the outre gallery here in melb and it was my girlfriend who reminded me to remember the name "kozyndan" to look it up later when we got home. we've both fallen in love with their work ever since.

friday, my good friend jim and i headed into the city and were planning to attend the opening night of kozyndan at the outre gallery exhibition in melbourne. jim, who's from san francisco, has been staying at my place for the week while he's been holidaying in melb and i've been acting the tour guide.

it was quite a hot and toasty (as jim would put it) day, and we had been trying to stay indoors where there were plenty of a/c like the galleries at NGV federation square, just hanging out at a local comic shop and browsing for cds and dvds at hmv. anyway, when we finally head to the exhibition, crossed our names off the guest list, we were stuck in here:



the opening was like 7pm, we probably got there like at 7:15 at the latest and it was pretty full as it was. we both browsed around looking at their awesome artworks, both the prints and the originals. to our surprise their originals are so tiny and full of details but oh so clean (as in no smudges etc.)



ok, the top 2 framed artwork are the limited colour prints, while the bottom 2 are pencilled originals which are like A5 size i'd guess!! amazing! sugoi sugoi!!! we chatted to both the artists, kozy and dan, pretty briefly and they are very nice and friendly. we brought some of their merch and got them signed. i got myself a colouring book called lactaid dreams (also known as "the most difficult coloring book")

anyway, it was getting even more busy in that compact gallery, don't think the a/c was working against the crowd and i said i'd pop in at andrew's b-day drinks at a bar around the corner. so we said our goodbyes, took some pics and headed off.