Japanther BIO
Once upon a time, Japanther (Ian Vanek and Matt Reilly) worked on a rock puppet opera with Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, Rodney Graham and several other artists. This rock puppet show debuted in Miami for Art Basel, and later played at The Walker Arts Center and The Whitney Biennial. Well, that's great, but Japanther felt unsatisfied. Hence they had 11-foot high puppets commissioned and retaliated in 2005 with "Dump The Body in Rikki Lake" a punk rock puppet opera! But the buck didn't stop there. Among other projects Japanther has since realized a synchronized swimming piece (2006) entitled "Dangerous When Wet", a light/sound/type installation at ICA in Philadelphia for the "Locally Localized Gravity" show and a piece entitle "Laugh Dance" with Robbins-Childs dance company at The Ballroom in Marfa, TX. Most recently Japanther performed "Japanther in 3-D" a collabrative effort endorsed by Performa 07' with set design by Dan Graham and Eugene Tsai, Spoken word poetry by Penny Rimbaud from CRASS, Kinetic Motion Dinosaur by Conrad and Doyle BLBC, live video by Peter Woods and choreography by Robbins-Childs at PS122 in NYC.