Guggenheim Museum Bilbao celebrates A Retrospective of Work by Takashi Murakami |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Wednesday, 11 March 2009 06:58 |
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With a complete selection of over 90 works in different media such as painting, industrial design, animation and fashion, the exhibition, curated by MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, reveals this artist’s personal universe: from his early works in the 1990s, in which he explored his own identity, to his large-scale sculptures created after 2000, veritable icons of this artist, and ending with his gallery of manufactured objects, his animation projects, his connection to the world of fashion, and his compelling works of recent years. The relationship with anime (animation) and manga (comics) is central to the aesthetic conception of the artist, who made his debut in the early 1990s. Both genres are, in his own words, “representative of modern everyday life in Japan” and stem from the otaku subculture (a word used to refer to the young and reclusive, obsessed fans of such genres as anime and manga). His work is also influenced by pop culture and by certain European and American artistic movements. Consequently, Murakami’s praxis brilliantly blends the bright palette of pop, the flatness of traditional Japanese art and certain elements of the Surrealist movement, where dreams played a fundamental role in the creative process. Scope of the exhibition In a space of 2,000 square meters on the museum’s third floor, sculpture, painting, fashion, animation and merchandising intermingle to sketch an outline of Murakami’s career laid out in a chronological overview, his work takes on a new dimension in the context of the sinuous and luminous spaces of Gehry’s building. The exhibition begins in the so-called classical galleries with a series of paintings created between 1991 and 2000 that reflect Murakami’s attempt to explore his own identity through meticulous research into his own brand. At the same time, he used his iconic images to engage in true self-portraiture, a practice that he began in the year 2000 and continues to this day. The evolution of Murakami’s avatar In 1993, in an effort to brand his own identity, Murakami created an alter ego that he named Mr. DOB, a character that blends elements of American pop with aspects of contemporary Japanese culture like anime and manga inspired by Sonic, the Sega mascot, and Doraemon, the popular Japanese comic character. This avatar originated from a shortened version of the dada-like phrase,“Dobojite dobojite” (Why? Why?) taken from the comic book Inakappe Taisho and from “oshamanbe”, a word with several meanings which Japanese comedian Toru Yuri used as his signature word.  As Murakami’s career evolved, so did Mr. DOB. In less than a decade, he went from an appealing DNA strand (ZuZaZaZaZaZa, 1994) to a balloon-like form with innocent eyes and a jovial smile (DOB’s March, 1995), and ultimately transformed into a creature with ferocious teeth and unsettling eyes in The Castle of Tin Tin (1998). After 2000, he became a gigantic monster with saliva and unknown substances oozing from his mouth, an allegory of society’s unending desire for consumption: Tan Tan Bo Puking—a.k.a. Gero Tan (2002). In addition to his paintings, the exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao also features his most acclaimed and controversial sculptural figures of the early years such as Miss Ko2 (1997), a thin waitress aspiring to be a pop singer, or the sculptural duo formed by Hiropon (1997), a young, largebreasted Japanese girl, and My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), a naked pubescent male—two aesthetic references to over-sexualized icons. . Murakami’s work navigates between Japanese and American subcultures, as evidenced in his invention of the term POKU, an amalgamation of pop art and otaku. In his large-scale triptych created in 1998 and entitled PO + KU Surrealism Mr. DOB, his typical “ultra-flat” monochromatic background is broken up by animated images of enormous eyes and shark-like teeth haphazardly swirling about. This work is installed alongside one of his major sculptures, DOB in the Strange Forest (1999). The contrast of opposites Since 2000, Murakami’s self-portraits (Mr. DOB, Inochi, Mr. Pointy, Tan Tan Bo and Oval) and his creations have continued to reflect his personal and professional evolution. Double meanings and the contrast of opposites are recurrent in the work of this Japanese artist: good and evil, sweetness and perversion, humor and social denunciation. His work often contains pleasant, brightly colored images that reveal dark, complex readings, like the multicolored mushrooms that appear in many of his creations which have been interpreted variously as a reference to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, male genitalia, or drug induced hallucinations. Other examples are the sympathetic characters Kaikai and Kiki. Their names are taken from the Japanese term, "kaikaikiki." This term encompasses the concept of "strange, yet captivating" and was used by critics in the sixteenth century to describe the work of painter, Kano Eitoku. Just as Kano Eitoku's work embodies elements of gutsiness and energy, as well as a keen sensitivity, Kaikai and Kiki personify diametrically opposite complex dispositions. The exhibition also includes some of the artist’s most recent and relevant works such as Oval Buddha Silver (2008), a sculpture of great beauty and harmony made of silver and considered by Murakami as one of his own “gods of art.” The piece is a meditative Buddha posed atop a lotus leaf and was created by Murakami in response to Naoki Takizawa, the then creative director for the fashion mogul Issey Miyake, who encouraged him to create a character inspired by Humpty Dumpty and Hyakume, a Japanese manga character that the artist read about as a child. Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1962, and he currently lives and works in both Tokyo and Long Island City, New York. He 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 lavish ornamentation. He studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music, where he received a degree in Nihonga (traditional Japanese painting). In 1990 he made his debut in contemporary art under the guidance of his friend and colleague, the artist Masato Nakamura. In 1993 he created his self-portrait Mr. DOB and began to make a name for himself in Japan and around the world thanks to his unique synthesis of traditional Japanese art, the contemporary trends of his homeland like anime and manga and American culture, especially Pop Art. The blend of pop culture and self branding in his artwork often draws comparisons to Andy Warhol, often leading the media to describe him as “the Japanese Andy Warhol”.  In 1996 he created the Hiropon Factory in Tokyo, a fusion of Japan’s traditional workshops and its modern corporations. Two years later he opened a new branch of the factory in Brooklyn, New York. From that moment on, he began to curate exhibitions and participate in various projects and individual exhibitions in America, and in 1999 he published “Hello, You Are Alive: Tokyo Pop Manifesto,” his first declaration of ideas on a uniquely Japanese approach to contemporary art. In 2002, the exhibition Takashi Murakami: Kaikai Kiki was shown at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris and at the Serpentine Gallery in London. A year later he installed Reversed Double Helix , his largest public sculpture at the Rockefeller Center in New York and began his collaboration with the French firm Louis Vuitton. Murakami’s work can be found in institutions such as the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Queensland Art Gallery and the Walker Art Center. All hold examples of Murakami’s work, which he continues to combine with his work as a designer, curator, patron, art critic and other facets of his practice. Visit Guggenheim Museum Bilbao at : http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/?idioma=en Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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