Larry Clark Stuff - Tokyo

Saturday, Sep 07, 2013 - Tuesday, Sep 17, 2013
Location:
United Arrows Tokyo
Larry Clark’s personal collection of skateboard decks, skater t-shirts, and related posters, stickers, polaroids, and stuff was on exhibit in Tokyo, at United Arrows and at a special pop-up booth in Tsutaya (Daikanyama, Tokyo) for September 2013. This was an expanded version of the exhibit Boo-Hooray presented at MOCA for the Printed Matter Los Angeles art book fair and at Milk Gallery in New York City.
Curated by Johan Kugelberg, the show featured Larry’s collection of skateboard decks and t-shirts spanning the late 1980s up until today, showcasing the guerrilla graphic design of companies like Fuct and Supreme, alongside outfits and boards used in Larry’s moviesWassup Rockers and Marfa Girl and materials/ephemera from his first movie Kids.
Exclusive to Japan, there was a limited edition Larry Clark/Boo-Hooray/United Arrows skateboard deck for sale, and a Japanese language edition of the catalog Larry Clark Stuff.
The reception party was on September 6, 2013, where Larry appeared accompanied by geisha girls. The next day, Larry gave a talk at Beauty & Youth United Arrows Harajuku on September 7, 2013.
A special Larry Clark pop-up booth was also open at Tsutaya in Daikanyama, from September 7 to September 17, 2013. At Tsutaya, Larry’s books and posters were exhibited and for sale. Larry gave a talk there on September 8th, 2013.
LARRY:
I started getting fascinated by the graphics on skateboards and T-shirts back in the 80’s. They were the very best graphics that I’d ever seen on T-shirts. The graphics on skateboards were really extraordinary, because the kids would get their own boards from skateboard companies. The skateboard company would give them a deck and say, “okay, make a design.” So the kids would have to become artists and design their own decks. There was a freedom in the design, and a freedom in making these T-shirts. They would use these big corporation logos and screw them up and fuck with them and change them. And make them subversive. And make them mean the opposite. All the corporations could do would be to send a cease and desist letter to the company, but by then the skateboards were all sold out and the T-shirts were all sold out, because they’re very disposable. When you skate, the side of the skateboard that has the graphic on it gets all ruined. I mean I used watch kids go in and look at all the graphics and buy the board and immediately it would be eradicated. It was really a very temporary thing. I even did my own skateboard in 1992. I took my images and silkscreened them on the board. I bought 10–11 blank skateboard decks, which weren’t easy to get. I had to find a company that would sell me the blank decks. Then I silkscreened an image on it. Those are all gone now. They’re in museums.Then Supreme asked me to do a skateboard deck. Collectors started buying my decks, but my deal with Supreme was they did like 400 decks, and I got half of them. What I did with mine, was I just gave them to kids in the ghetto.