to make up for this lack of my blogging, i thought that you could help me decide if i should be wearing this pair of kicks - ray fong adidas designed by one of my fave artists, barry mcgee, aka twister and HUF or have them framed along with its tee and treat them as an art piece? here's the story:
earlier today, i had sporadically stopped by HUF shop to check out any cool kicks they have, and i spotted that they just have HUF adidas' yellow series signature brown shoe designed by barry mcgee. i knew in my heart that i had to buy this pair for that it has an asian cartoon guy on the shoe's tongue with its great extras. never mind its 3-figure price tag, i immediately bought it along with its brown 'ray fong' character tee.
afterwards, i went to the white walls gallery to pick up obey giant's poster and went home immediately. susie and i continued to paint at our new dining room and afterwards, i went online and checked out the big G to see if there's any concept behind this adidas kick. boy, little did i know that there was a huge stir in the public about this kick. many peepos wanted to boycott adidas because of this. (remember the A+F's incident?) i've known that barry mcgee was a hapa (he's half chinese) and i found a few blogs/news articles about this controversial kick. here's an example:
ray fong + comments
just google on 'em and you'll come up with great stuff.
sadly, i've been following the whole thing religiously. it's been eating lots of time here and i think i've been on it for about 4 hours or something.
because of the kicks' artsy sentimental value, i feel that i should box-frame them, and hang it out in my new apartment. this will definitely be one of those conversation starter for our future guests.
i've told my darling that i would definitely wear this brown 'ray fong' tee to chinatown along with my digicam just to take immediate reactions of these chinese peepos. but since i am american-chinese, they won't probably care that much as opposed to being a caucasian. i truly feel sorry for those peepos who find this 'ray fong' character offensive because they are totally missing the BIG PICTURE here. i would say that maybe 20% of americans here are not quite creative-educated, about the same as owning US passports. (perhaps only 5% of them actually travel out of north america!)
ok, enough of my late-night ranting here and i should be hitting the sack now.
Posted by gamma888 at April 12, 2006 02:21 AMIt even make it on BBC news - spotted it other day
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4895898.stm
Posted by: steve on April 13, 2006 12:34 AMdude, keep them framed for a while... who knows they'll be worth $$$ eventually...and they'd make a great conversation piece! :D
i also think it's going a lil overboard with this racism thing - i guess that's what it takes to have a piece of art that provokes the society. if people don't like it, they DON't have to buy it.
hey, it's even bringing more attention to mcgee...
this reminded me of the time when i took a picture of a black model covered with flour and my boss, who's also of the same race, received comments from his community - they thought it was a sterotypic pull as they felt that the flour represented cocaine.
that was quite a surprise to me cos that concept never even occurred to me. i chose flour as it was a beautiful contract to the model's skin, giving it a delicate look.
art isn't about pleasing the society. it is about how art was made from the artist's eye/thought/heart/life!...
OH! another funny story here: last monday i was wearing a "got rice" t-shirt that my dad had given me. when my bf's dad (who's 110% chinese) saw it, he did not even associate it with rice as in food... he merely thought it represented the one and only condoleeza rice!!
Posted by: muck on April 13, 2006 08:52 AMheh very amusing on the rice bit.
think i'll just frame the sneakers n shirt since it was classified as an art object in views of barry mcgee's eyes. barry's known for dissing corporations, but his association with Adidas, that's his first ever collaboration with a corporation through HUF. Guess he knew what he was getting into.
Posted by: gabe on April 14, 2006 10:25 AMI'm american-chinese and i'm offended. You're probably one of the select few that lives a happy life. I've had people slant their eyes and make fun of me, trust me it's not a great feeling. There's nothing creative about it.
Posted by: chnkyeyes on April 15, 2006 11:01 AM