‘The Rest is Total Silence’ is a group exhibition of four artists from New York, Brooklyn, London and Tokyo. One of the participating artists commented “My friend described my work as ‘looking like the walls of a pubescent teenage boys room or the inside covers of his school books. A comment I was quite flattered by.” This statement interestingly reflects some aspect of this show. All their works are painted and drawn in very meditative way with delicate lines revealing an anarchic and wild boy(and girl) sensibility. Another common thing is they tend to get inspiration from various types of music, actually one of the participating artists is also known as a professional musician. They fuse music and art as a core inspiration source.

BRIAN DEGRAW was born in 1974, lives in New York. Degraw practices drawing, video, sculpture, and writing. He is also a musician in many bands (Angelblood, Gang Gang Dance, Saab Song with Harmony Korine). Artist and actor of the New York scene, he composes a dense, inhabited and luminous work. Degraw’s paintings and drawings assault the viewer with their total humanity, and goth, underworld, grittiness.

FRENCH’s works contain a range of subjects, generally pretty dark in theme, metal logo’s, evil metal band’s, satanic imagery, buildings, tanks, skeleton’s, anatomical drawings, pirates, surfing skeletons, Jesus, ravens, eagles and skulls. This London artist claims that those elements are all side effects of listening to too much metal music. For the recent work, he has been obsessed with drawing tree roots and veins almost like a spreading disease across his work. They are a bit like something from a sci-fi or horror film.

MAYA HAYUK’s paintings are equal parts disturbing and provocative and hilarious. The images themselves are refreshingly straightforward: clean, simple lines that convey the figure with a minimum of distraction and bright, often acid colors with a feel reminiscent of advertising in the sixties and seventies. Hayuk’s work serves as much as a starting point, a place of departure as it does a destination, and ends in itself.

KIYOSHI KURODA places emphasis on lines depicting ‘Unbalanced World.’ He uses plant, insect, anatomy and animal motifs in his paintings, and while rendering his subjects with arresting curves, his finished works tend to be both venomous and cool in appearance. He weaves in some poisonous and stimulating factors and by using this method, the artist lets the antithetical concept of ‘Sweet & Charming’ and the ‘Dreadful and Terrifying’ coexist.

‘The Rest is Total Silence’ is curated by Taka Kawachi, who had curated Saeko Takagi’s solo show and a group show ‘Remarkable Hands’ at ATM Gallery last year.