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28/10/2007

Murakami

MOCA at the Geffen Contemporary, Los Angeles

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) presents the most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of internationally acclaimed artist Takashi Murakami. Born in Japan in the early 1960s, Murakami belongs to a generation of artists whose pictorial language brings together motifs linked to popular culture and the formal qualities of traditional Japanese art, such as flatness, pattern, and ornamentation. © MURAKAMI—on view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA October 29, 2007– February 11, 2008—features key selections that span Murakami’s entire career, including political works from the early 1990s, large-scale otaku-inspired figure projects of the late ’90s, and the ongoing evolution of Murakami’s anime alter ego. Organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, © MURAKAMI will travel to the Brooklyn Museum, New York (April 4–July 13, 2008); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (September 2008–January 2009); and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (February–May 2009) following its debut at MOCA.

MOCA Director Jeremy Strick notes that, “MOCA’s long-standing relationship with Murakami and our history of featuring contemporary Japanese artists are just two of the important forces behind this exhibition. With this thorough presentation of Murakami’s diverse oeuvre, MOCA is pleased to continue our tradition of presenting influential artists in their first large-scale monographic exhibitions.” Murakami commented, “MOCA has a very special place in my heart. Ever since seeing the amazing Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s (1992) exhibition, one of my goals was to someday have a solo exhibit at this museum and with the curator of that exhibition. Now I am finally able to realize this dream working with Paul Schimmel and MOCA on © MURAKAMI.”

As one of the most influential artists to emerge from postwar Japan, Murakami has created a vast body of work that has reached broad audiences—from art collectors to video-game obsessed teenagers. Much like Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, Murakami’s practice is not only referential of pop culture, but his entire life is symbiotic with pop itself, creating a reciprocal relationship between high art and mass culture. Drawing upon imagery and personalities found in his day-to-day life—in both the United States and Japan—Murakami envisions characters with both fantastical and spiritual iconographies, which he painstakingly brings to life in painting, film, installation, or sculptural form. He then returns these creations to the marketplace through the production of various merchandise—such as key chains, stickers, and T-shirts, among other items.

Emerging after the collapse of Japan’s bubble economy and the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989, Murakami’s practice is born from a breakdown between production and consumption, image and value, and self and nation. Murakami’s design concepts, processes, and quality standards are thus symptomatic of this context. Under the guise of his international corporation Kaikai Kiki, Co., Ltd., Murakami masterminds a remarkable constellation of activities. In addition to his role as an artist, he is active as a curator, lecturer, event coordinator, radio host, newspaper columnist, and manager for emerging artists. He runs his studio in the tradition of Japan’s craft guilds, which are based on a hierarchy of staff divided into highly specialized areas of skill and craftsmanship. Inextricably involved in all facets of his corporation and production, and in an effort to preserve the artistic merit of all of his creations—whether he is producing a six-foot tall sculpture or mass-produced miniature figurine— Murakami personally evaluates the quality of his works after each stage of production.

Exhibition Highlights
More than 90 works in various media—painting, sculpture, installation, and film—will be installed in five sections, occupying over 35,000 square feet of exhibition space. The first portion will consist of Murakami’s acclaimed sculptural figures beginning with Miss Ko2 (1997), a thin, long-legged waitress aspiring to be a pop singer; Hiropon (1997), a wide-eyed Japanese girl jumping a rope formed from milk squirting out of her gargantuan breasts; and My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), a pubescent male nude wielding a spiraling white lasso—the product of semen ejaculated from his erect penis. In addition, this section will showcase a collection of new work, including Second Mission Project Ko2 (2007), a lavender sculpture that depicts Miss Ko2—one of the artist’s signature characters who has transformed into an android after being involved in a car accident. The second portion of the exhibition includes Murakami’s merchandise, displayed in an archival shelving system with hundreds of Murakami’s multiples and collectibles. Upstairs, and separate from this room will be a 1,000 square foot, fully operational Louis Vuitton store within and as part of the exhibition. The store will carry products specially created by Murakami and Louis Vuitton for the occasion, as part of the continuing collaboration initiated in 2000 by Marc Jacobs, Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton.

In the largest section of the exhibition, paintings and sculptures will be installed chronologically in ten classically proportioned, white cubed rooms tracing Murakami’s artistic development inside MOCA’s warehouse atmosphere. Characterized by two distinct periods of the artist’s career, this portion of the exhibition highlights Murakami’s attempt to structure his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity in a selection of works created between 1991 and 2000, and the artist’s exploration of self-actualization through self-portraiture in works created since 2000.

Murakami’s early interest in branding and identity is evidenced in Signboard TAKASHI (1991), an artwork in which the artist appropriated the TAMIYA company logo—Japan’s leading producer of plastic model kits—and created a signboard with his name above the company slogan: “First in quality around the world.” In 1993, in an effort to brand his own identity, Murakami created an alter ego that he named DOB, originating from the famous gag, Dobojite dobojite oshamanbe (Why? Why?) by comedian, Yuri Toru (1921–99). As Murakami’s understanding of his reality and identity evolved, so did DOB. Commencing as an organic form resembling a microscopic strand of DNA, the figure transformed from a balloon-like form with large, innocent eyes, and a jovial smile into a monstrous creature with ferocious, jagged teeth and numerous, large unsettling eyes, as in The Castle of Tin Tin (1998).

Navigating between Japanese and American subcultures, Murakami also invented the phrase POKU—an amalgamation of pop art and otaku (a word used to describe fans of anime and manga). He brilliantly blends the bright palette of pop, the flatness of anime, and the ominous dreams of surrealism in his large-scale work PO + KU Surrealism (1998). His typical monochromatic background is broken up by disturbing sections of enormous eyes and shark-like teeth haphazardly swirling about. This gigantic multi-panel triptych will be installed with the major sculptural work, DOB in the Strange Forest (1999) along with a series of five colored PO + KU surrealism canvases for the exhibition.

Since 2000, Murakami’s work reflects his own self-actualization through self-portraiture, in the transfigurative forms of the ever-evolving DOB, Inochi, Mr. Pointy, Tan Tan Bo, and Oval. An ensemble of Murakami’s signature characters and flower and mushroom motifs appear in the apocalyptic painting Tan Tan Bo Puking—a.k.a. Gero Tan (2002), where DOB—in the form of a gigantic monster with sharp teeth and unknown substances oozing from his mouth—begins to melt into the other characters and its own saliva. Kaikai and Kiki, Murakami’s spiritual guardians, the physical embodiment of good (Kaikai) and evil (Kiki) appear—one has died and the other is about to ascend into the after life. At the heart of Murakami’s spectacular narrative, we witness an allegory of society’s unending desire for consumption, where Gero Tan embodies the accumulation of this desire into a powerful form of sacrificial death.

Murakami also portrays himself as Inochi (2004), an adolescent boy with an oval-shaped head— adapted from Steven Spielberg’s legendary E.T.—slender shoulders, waif-thin legs, and outstretched arms with open palms. Inochi’s Christ-like stance, coupled with his widely opened hips, command attention toward his childlike penis. The incarnation of Inochi, which translates to our physical life existence, has been expanded to include photographs of him in various environments, as well as video vignettes of his life.

In the fourth section, the exhibition will feature two monumental works: Reverse Double Helix (2003- 2004), an installation based upon a Buddhist ensemble consisting of Tongari-kun (Mr. Pointy), an enormous creature with dozens of human arms and a giant, bead-shaped head pierced by a sharp unicorn-like horn thrusting upward 23 feet, and the four protective deities—Tamon-kun (north), Jikkokkun (east), Zoucho-kun (south), and Koumokkun (west). Emblematic of Buddha (and also the artist himself), he sits upright upon a giant frog—symbolic for return in Japan—that rests on an assemblage of lotus petals, guarded by the other characters. A particularly important feature will be the debut of the 18 1/2-foot platinum-leafed sculpture Oval Buddha, a two-faced being who sits posed like Buddha atop a lotus leaf pedestal with an elephant at its base.

In the final section, a new animated film, kaikai & kiki will premiere. The film depicts kaikai and kiki’s mission to investigate an underground power source inside a world controlled by artificial intelligence. Fueled by a richness, sophistication, and density of iconography, this film promises to be the wellspring from which Murakami will draw inspiration for his oeuvre for many years to come.

About the Artist
Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1962 and currently lives and works in both Tokyo and Long Island City, New York. He received his bachelor of fine arts, master of fine arts, and doctoral degrees from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music. At MOCA, he curated Superflat (2000) and participated in Public Offerings (2001). His work has been featured in major solo museum exhibitions at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, and Serpentine Gallery, London (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2001); and Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (1999). His other solo exhibitions include: Gagosian Gallery, New York (May 1 to June 9, 2007); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2005); Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2004, 2000, 1998, and 1997); Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2004, 1998, and 1996); Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2003, 2001, and 1999); Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris (2003, 2001, and 1995); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2001); P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2000); Feature Inc., New York (1998 and 1996); SCAI the Bathhouse, Tokyo (1995 and 1994); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (1993); Gallery Cellar, Nagoya (1993); and Roentgen Kunst Institut, Tokyo (1992 and 1991). Murakami’s work is currently in the collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Queensland Art Gallery; and Walker Art Center. In addition to his work as an artist, Murakami is a curator and entrepreneur.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 328-page hardcover catalogue, designed by awardwinning graphic designer Lorraine Wild of Green Dragon Office. In addition to a comprehensive plate section, the publication features newly commissioned essays by renowned writers and scholars, including Dick Hebdige, Midori Matsui, Scott Rothkopf, Paul Schimmel, and Mika Yoshitake. Co-published by Rizzoli International Publications, © MURAKAMI is available for $65 at all MOCA Store locations.

Image: Tan Tan Bo, 2001, acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 141.7 x 212.6 x 2.6 in., collection of John A. Smith and Vicky Hughes, London, courtesy Tomio Koyama Gallery, © Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., all rights reserved

MURAKAMI is organized by MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel with Project Coordinator Mika Yoshitake.

Media contact:
Elisabeth Hinckley ehinckley@rogersandcowan.com

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
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