Eyezon Tank

Solid Yellow Unpainted It’s finally here! Ningyoushi.com opened their new retail store, double punch, in San Francisco, California in May 2004. Double Punch is located in North Beach district and only a couple blocks from the beautiful bay. After many years of being part of the online toy community, Ningyoushi has decided to begin their vision of the collector’s haven – a place where cool toys, merchandise and art harvested from designers worldwide, can be found under one roof. You can experience the trendiest collectibles from Japan, limited edition designer toys, art, clothing and books that you’ve only been able to see on the web and magazines! Double Punch also features a gallery space in the mezzanine level featuring art and exhibitions from local artists. I founded PLASEEBO in 2005 as a shop dedicated to creating unique one of a kind collectible figures and designing original figures for Ultra Limited editions. I have often thought of toys as small sculpture. They are miniature interpretations of things that are unattainable in the "real" world. They enable a child to become General Patton directing the Third Army of die cast Dinky tanks through the dirt in his own back yard or allow an adult to time travel back to that moment in the back yard of his memory. This spurring of the imagination is certainly the stuff of Art. I call the way I build my figures "Frankensculpt", because they are cobbled together from unrelated parts in a sculpting process which breathes a new life into them. I like my figures to be edgy, quirky, punkish, dark, more like Franz Kafka than Walt Disney. Some times the work is inspired by my concern for what I see as deplorable human behavior such as our war in Iraq, which inspired my WAR figure or my anger over the unfair practices of Banks which resulted in my sculpting the " Bank America " piece. Other times it may bubble up from distant Max Toy Co’s Kaiju Eyezon is turning 5 years old, and to celebrate its birthday, Mark Nagata is preparing a very special show at the San Francisco store / gallery Double Punch. The show opens Saturday, November 3rd, 2012 until Dec 2nd, 2012. Special guest artists, Todd Robertson and Will Long will be there. The poster for the show was illustrated and designed by Javier Jiménez.