2K by Gingham

The T-shirt has long been a fashion staple amongst teenagers worldwide, functioning as the medium of choice for subcultural communication for nearly 40 years. While many corporate brands still treat the common T-shirt as a mere billboard to propel their oversized logos into posterity, the trend has been to adopt a more creative, artistic approach in the temple of the tee. These canvases carry the silk screened and ironed-on legacies of countless anonymous artists. When Yoshi Kawasaki recognized the possibility of harnessing this network of potential “wall space”, his current T-shirt line, 2K by Gingham, was born.

Kawasaki has always been fond of spending leisure time in the gift and book shops of museums and galleries, noticing his fellow shoppers tendency to purchase T-shirts featuring the work of their favorite artists. He realized that by wearing these T-shirts, the fans of the featured artists were helping to promote their idols’ work, and to further educate others of its existence through a kind of travelling exhibit. The merger between street art and fashion has been evident for some time, but Kawasaki takes it a step further. His vision is to blend in fine art, as well.
Kawasaki started 2K in Japan out of a frustration with the art scene there. In his words, the youth have been turned off to learning about art because of an overly academic curriculum. His goal is to show that art is not a simply a mountain of cumbersome facts, but rather an omnipresent force that permeates everything they admire—from music to film and, of course, fashion.
While the defining line between street art and fine art is yet to be clearly drawn, Kawasaki is helping to keep it blurred. 2K features contemporary graffiti artists like Sam Flores as equally as icons of pop art past such as Andy Warhol. They aren’t just selling shirts, though, the emphasis is on the art itself. Kawasaki hopes that the images his company mass produces act as catalysts to spur people to complete the circle, by searching out an artist they may have never known, and actually come face to face with the original piece of art instead of the reproduction on fabric.
“We need to remember that all these products, including our T-shirts, are to be consumed and true art will never be consumed.”

Buy 2k by Gingham Online @ Krudmart

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