Daylight Artist Books & Editions, temporary shop for the month of May in Chinatown, Los Angeles
May 2–31
Saturday & Sunday 12–6pm
And by appointment
Opening Friday, May 1
6pm
With works by
Edwin Arzeta
Cherry
Dancing Star Press
Miles Jopling
Kima
William Pan
Nathan Rickard
Brett Westfall
Yang Luxi
Yoshikatsu Yamato
628 W College St
Kima 114 - All Under Heaven
Personal essay by William Pan on Chinese and Taiwanese music in relation to language, place, and history.
“My first obsessive listening, despite a childhood of piano lessons in the Western classical tradition, was of rap music from southwestern China. Through a YouTube channel run by a young Chinese Vancouverite that reposted self-released music videos from the Chinese web, I had become captivated by the output of a group of rappers from Chengdu… They seemed more keenly aware of the outside world than my Santa Barbara peers, sampling American beats, listening to rap music from New York and Compton and Atlanta. At the same time, they were fully integrated into their local community: they worked as 7-Eleven cashiers and soccer coaches and took care of groups of children who often appeared in their music videos. A track on Higher Brothers’ first mixtape, “Xiǎo dìwá” 小弟娃, is about serving as a good role model for young boys.”
“I especially liked the movement later called ‘new Taiwanese song,’ brought into motion by Blacklist Studio’s 1989 album Lia̍h-kông koa 抓狂歌, released two years after martial law had been lifted… The following year, Lim Giong released Hiòng-chiân kiâⁿ 向前走, which brought Taiwanese-language rock into public consciousness; his song, expressing a straightforward optimism about moving to the city, was widely played on radio and television when the much more politically incisive Blacklist Studio songs never were. Taiwanese, long disparaged as a backward, obsolete language, suddenly became the language used to record some of the most experimental music to come from Taiwan.”
Design for ‘Rising Sun, Falling Rain: Japanese Woodblock Prints From the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts’ at the Hammer Museum. The exhibition traces the evolution of ukiyo-e printmaking and the later shin-hanga movement, and features over eighty prints, including works by Katsukawa Shunshō, Utagawa Toyokuni, Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, and Kawase Hasui. I’ve set the identity in Cormorant Garamond, modified with custom drawn swashes. The type references historical modes of printing and the availability of this material to a wider general public, highlighting the function of ukiyo-e in creating accessible, affordable works of art for a growing urban middle class.
