Award-winning toy makers and sculptural storytellers Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk – collectively known as coarse – are spinning their visual yarns over in Japan at the moment as Tokyo’s Diesel Art Gallery plays host to a selection of the duo’s best work to date. Voyages draws on work produced since coarse began collaborating in 2003, and displays the pair’s signature sculpting style of sharp edges and smooth lines that gives the fibreglass and resin figures a kind of uncanny CGI quality.
If the coarse technique is intriguing, so are the figures themselves and the stories they tell when placed together in the artfully-staged scenes. This exhibition features work from two of the artists’ most popular series, called Noop World and Souls Gone Mad. In the former, a weird unrequited love triangle exists between the confused yearling Noops, the Paw and the tentacled Nisms, with each species pining forlornly for the love of another. The latter collection is an even darker affair – a journey symbolising lost youth and innocence filled with despondent children, cute but silent owls and a mysterious towering monster. The Voyages exhibition continues until 13 February 2015.
Photography, Kenji Takahashi
© coarse
Photo, Kenji Takahashi
© coarse
Photo, Kenji Takahashi
© coarse
Photo, Kenji Takahashi
