Laurent and Jerome had showed me some of their pictures taken at the Murakami exhibition. I was somewhat surprised as they didn’t look much like the artist I knew. Must look at that and so I did. There was nothing I could find on Internet to explain what this work was about. Nor was there anything at the Gallery Perrotin. However, I enjoy going to this gallery as the space is beautiful.
Murakami who is only 54, lives and works between Tokyo, Japan and New York.
On the first floor, we are greeted by a series of new triptychs and diptychs conceived by Murakami as homage to the painter Francis Bacon, alongside recognizable sculpture pieces from the artist’s catalogue like “Dragon Heads – Gold.”
When I had see the photo of this before going to the exhibition, it was the triptych which was easily recognizable as Bacon but certainly less « a look alike » of Lucien Freud.
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| Hommage to Francis Bacon ( George Dyer) - 2016 |
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| Hommage to Francis Bacon (Lucien Freud) - 2016 |
Upstairs, a piece from the “Enso” (literally, circle) series demonstrates Murakami’s affinity for mixed media. A spray painted circle following one of the most famous motifs in Japanese Zen Painting sits above a silver textured background of the artist’s trademark skulls in a three meter wide and tall piece which fills a whole room.
What I found a difficult to understand where the so called « Rothko ». Huge and small canvass with one color. Until looking at them closely where they all had tiny little recognizable heads
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| Teleportation 2016 |
The secondary space features more than 15 painted handbags with accompanying paintings. This is when I saw that those huge uni-color paintings were put to use as the background for the bags.
There was also monumental multi-panel painting “A Picture of Lives Wriggling in the Forest at the Deep End of the Universe” which reaches around three walls and represents a large scale anthology of Murakami’s mind-melting world.
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| "A picture of lives wiggling in the forest at the deep end of the universe" (31 panels) |
Throughout the exhibition, the artist’s style is instantly recognizable through his simultaneously charming and monstrous cartoon characters, signature skull and flower motives, it began to look very much the same from one picture to the next. I didn’t know if they were journalists or otherwise, but two young Africans were turning round and round the sculpture of Murakami setting off the mechanism that made his eyes roll (remember the clocks?) and something said in Japanese. They asked me to take a photo of them, which of course I did. They must have stayed in from of that statue of a good half hour. Mystifying!
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| Takashi Murakami (1962-) |
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| Takashi Murakami (1962-) |
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| Takashi Murakami (1962-) |
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| Takashi Murakami (1962-) |
Most of his work for this exhibition was so large that it was a little difficult to take good pictures of a whole. Here are some of them along with others just to show you the detail in his work.
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| "To be dertermined" -2016 |
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| The Four Heavenly Kings - 2016 |
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| "To be dertermined" -2016 |
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| It's the background that makes the difference |
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| It's the background that makes the difference |
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| It's the background that makes the difference |
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| It's the background that makes the difference |
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| Warp out - 2016 |
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| Part of the below painting |
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| Part of the above |
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| Middle of the to pictures above |
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| "Enso" 2016 |
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| The full painting "5 Panels of "A picture of lives wiggling in the forest at the deep end of the universe" |
Murakami’s work sits between many universes—art and cartoon, yin and yang, Jekyll and Hyde—but nowadays the artist is by no means an aimless dreamer.
“I change my direction or continue ». he says
The exhibition I had just seen was a definite change of direction but perhaps I like his work better when it is a little less cluttered! How about you?
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