Design Festa 30

The Design Festa that took place in Odaiba’s Big Sight complex over the weekend also happened to be the 15th anniversary of the project. It offered a mind-numbing array of displays containing all possible drawing and painting media, design items and performances. As far as art was concerned, my two picks were Fukao Atsushi’s grim naturalistic fantasies and Eun Kyung Kim’s textile prints.

Eun Kyung Kim is a Professor at the Department of Fashion Coordination at Korea’s Yeoju Institute of Technology. His well-coordinated booth looked more like a gallery installation than a regular arts’ fair display. The works, all originally designed, were women’s coats featuring silkscreen prints of monochrome industrial landscapes and garish pink flowers.

Fukao Atsushi is a Tokyo-based illustrator and a graphic designer. The works on display included small format illustrations and CD covers, a medium-size reproduction tagged “Domestic animal party,” and a large digital print of a composition shown on Atsushi’s webpage.

The next Design Festa will be held in May (15–16).