School of Incredibly Strange

by Yoshi Ranpeki

I have always loved RE/Search.

Ever since I saw a picture of V.Vale all in black, surrounded by mysterious-looking records in BRUTUS Magazine vol. 328 when I was 13 years old, I have always admired him. When I first met Vale, I asked him who was his favorite painter, and his answer was “Bosch!” I felt for the first time, that the world had no boundaries.

There were connections. History starting from the Beat Generation to the Hippie Movement, and then to Punk, and encompassing Dada & Surrealism, William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard. All of Black Humor interacting to form Industrial Culture.

Punk was not just a childish style but also an Art Movement as serious as Dada & Surrealism. And we must realize that Pop was not simply a pretty art form, but also something that carries along dark madness behind it. Clovis Trouille painted a colorful kitsch theatre, contrasting a sex party with Christ and saints in full blackness. Here is the borderline joining “Pop” and “Surreal” and this is the core of the “Incredibly Strange” aesthetic of RE/Search.

Painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers — whatever the medium, the great artists (many featured in JUXTAPOZ magazine and published by Last Gasp) who are attracted by RE/Search‘s magnet should be called “School of Incredibly Strange.” I think it is time for us to think about the world-wide connection of the underground scene by putting RE/SEARCH in the center of the table — taken as seriously as Surrealism and Pop Art.

We know that the Contemporary Art History which we are taught in this society is an end product of Duchamp’s misunderstood “Anti-Art.” I believe that the “School of Incredibly Strange” is the true descendant of Duchamp and Warhol. I wish to repaint the false Contemporary Art History with works of the “School of Incredibly Strange.”