The Art of ~ Mr. ~ on Review at 34 Long Gallery

Wednesday, 09 August 2006 13:00

Cape Town, SA - An international highlight of the Review show is a work by renowned Japanese artist Mr. That’s right, Mr. with a full stop. (His real name, which he prefers not to use professionally, is Masakatu Iwamoto.)

Mr. is a protégé of Takashi Murakami, Japan’s best known contemporary artist-designer.  He was born in Cuba in 1969, and gained exposure to all kinds of contemporary influences from Italian arte povera (Chia, Clemente) to early American pop (Johns, Rauschenberg) as an art student before he participated in Murakami’s super flat productions at Kaikai Kiki in Tokyo.  He recycled all manner of disused objects to create artworks while learning all he could about computer animation, finding the dichotomy between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art intensely disturbing.  On the verge of making a career as a manga (Japanese comics) cartoonist, he found himself returning to ‘second-hand dealing’: making furtive drawings of waif-like Lolita figures, manga-style, on discarded receipts, subway ticket stubs and fragments of packaging material.  After working as an assistant in Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki workshop he gained recognition and his sketches on unwanted remnants and bits and pieces have become sought-after by art collectors world-wide.  They remain fascinated by his ironic - or is it sarcastic, or just plain weird – images combining Heidi and Peter with Lolita and Casper the friendly ghost on what appears to be litter – or is it flotsam and jetsam?  Come and view Toughness Cover and decide for yourself.

Also on exhibition will be a hand-colored spot etching, Xylene Cyanol dye solution, edition of only 65, by Damien Hirst.  Hirst, according to Art Review (November 2005), is the hottest living artist on the planet today.  Art Review (p76) says this about Hirst’s spot paintings: “ … his formaldehyde animals and medicine cabinets are undisputed museum pieces, [but] the popularity of his spot paintings defies the art market’s usual regard for rarity.  At the last count, there were almost 500 spot paintings, but the more spots there are, the more iconic they become and the more people want them.  In fact, the most popular item in Tate Modern shops is Hirst’s spot badge; they’ve sold over 20,000 of them”…be spotted at 34LONG.