Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John is sharing selections from the Off-Ramp vault to help you explore this imperfect paradise.
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This is a special Off-Ramp Extra segment recorded on the road at the new Samuel Freeman gallery in Culver City, featuring my entire interview with iconic Japanese artist Masami Teraoka, with a live and active audience.
Teraoka made his name inserting modern items into paintings that otherwise looked like traditional Japanese wood block prints -- cell phones, hamburgers, etc. -- as a way of commenting on how American culture infiltrated Japanese culture.
Later, he dug into the AIDS crisis with poignant and pointed works.
And lately, he's been addressing the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Those paintings are rather graphic, so you'll have to check the link below, or go see them through October 13th at the gallery.
Masami is a rare artist who loves talking about every nuance of his work, and is also much funnier than most artists, as you'll hear in our unedited interview.