About
Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Takashi Murakami.
Beneath its bright and playful appearance, Murakami’s art deftly challenges the established dichotomies of high art and popular culture, East and West, present and past, life and death, humor and gravity, skepticism and belief. Visually, his work merges the dystopic worlds of popular anime and manga cartoons with the ultra-refined techniques of traditional Nihonga painting.
The centerpiece of Murakami’s compact exhibition is a vast and intricate five-panel painting which possesses the intensity of such masterworks as Tan Tan Bo Puking – a.k.a. Gero Tan (2002). If the jaunty cartoons Kaikai and Kiki have come to be seen as avatars of the opposing aspects of Murakami’s own character, then this immense and ambitious work, jostling with Kaikais and Kikis of every size, shape, and humor, can be interpreted to be his ultimate self-portrait, predicated on an identity that is very much of our time—culturally specific yet ambivalent, mercurial, and multiplicitous.
The Kaikai Kiki painting is flanked by new paintings in the Time Bokan series, begun in 1993. A key image in Murakami’s oeuvre, the skull-shaped mushroom cloud is borrowed from the eponymous Japanese anime TV series from the 1970s. The cloud symbolized the villains’ demise at the end of each episode, although they would unfailingly reappear in the next, to the delight of their young audience. Although the creators of the anime series could not have intended to send a positive message about the atomic bombing of Japan, let alone a safe return from it, the invincible villains became great favorites with children. By reviving this powerful image of Manichean paradox as a form of vanitas in relation to self-portraiture, Murakami provides a bold interpretation of a classical genre within a wholly new iconography.
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Takashi Murakami and RTFKT: An Arrow through History
Bridging the digital and the physical realms, the three-part presentation of paintings and sculptures that make up Takashi Murakami: An Arrow through History at Gagosian, New York, builds on the ongoing collaboration between the artist and RTFKT Studios. Here, Murakami and the RTFKT team explain the collaborative process, the necessity of cognitive revolution, the metaverse, and the future of art to the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2022
The Summer 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, with two different covers—featuring Takashi Murakami’s 108 Bonnō MURAKAMI.FLOWERS (2022) and Andreas Gursky’s V & R II (2022).
Murakami on Ceramics
Takashi Murakami writes about his commitment to the work of Japanese ceramic artists associated with the seikatsu kōgei, or lifestyle crafts, movement.
In Conversation
Takashi Murakami and Hans Ulrich Obrist
Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews the artist on the occasion of his 2012 exhibition Takashi Murakami: Flowers & Skulls at Gagosian, Hong Kong.
Takashi Murakami at LACMA
In a conversation recorded at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Takashi Murakami describes the process behind three major large-scale paintings, including Qinghua (2019), inspired by the motifs painted on a Chinese Yuan Dynasty porcelain vase.
“AMERICA TOO”
Join us for an exclusive look at the installation and opening reception of Murakami & Abloh: “AMERICA TOO”.