KID9

ALL THAT FUCKING PINK

I first met Josh, like all good relationships start…on the internet. We shared a mutual interest in Illustration, terrible Graffiti and Japanese pop culture. Since knowing him I’ve had to change his fucking name in my phone about thirty times, so he better stick to this Teens On Acid thing, or he can stay in my contacts as bloody KID9... I suppose all the years of cartoons we had as kids…you know, the good ones like Transformers, not the shit ones they have today, has had an amazing effect on him. Some deeper intrinsic understanding of not only the form of the characters, but an understanding of the language they speak. It’s like he is bloody related to them, he gets them so well. A secret slang that he can talk, and everyone else can only listen to in some seemingly voyeuristic manner. In a way this is what makes his work so powerful, it’s a basic, elemental realness that transcends any spoken language. People could consider his output to be filth, people could consider his output to be low-brow, it could even be taken as juvenile…but I am yet to see ONE single thing he has made which has not made me stop and pore over it [usually wishing I was the one that had made it]. It is work that instantly smacks you in the face, calls your Mum names and causes you to dig that little bit deeper to “Get” it. In one foul swoop he manages to create a concise drama, without excessive painterliness, egotistical complexity or extraneous “filler”….It gets straight to the point, and kicks you in the balls. Simple imagery, saying extraordinary things. Advertisers have been trying to crack that code for years, to make banality somehow profound….well they obviously aren’t fucking cool enough, because a little bit of punk, a little bit of street and a whole lot of blood noses could sell ANYTHING to me. Demented Yogi Bears with a Hentai fetish, waving cats that are definitely stoned and the ever present Arale homages, all existing in a world of tentacles and mysteriously floating eyeballs that are a complete reality…Totally believable in these visual dialogues he creates. This Teens on Acid caper is just a big hilarious juxtaposition which could be considered obscene, if it wasn’t so brutally fucking honest. Under close scrutiny, we become part of this mysterious “Floating world 2.0” on display. It permeates us and makes us take stock of our own lives, makes us think about our own flaws, makes us reconsider everything our damn schoolteachers ever told us was fact. The works are just a giant mirror aimed squarely at the viewer with the words “wake the fuck up” scrawled terribly in cheap pink lipstick across it. Every hidden secret we thought we all kept perfectly safe is now on display for the world to scrutinise….You cannot hide from yourself, and that is the best way to describe the work. Each person that sees it can only relate to it on one single level, and that level is purely attached to themselves. It may mean nothing, It may mean everything….But in the end it doesn’t really matter, coz that shit is real. REALLY real. J2SKE