ART-PRESENTATION: Murakami & Abloh-Technicolor 2

Earlier this year, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami collaborated with multi-hyphenate creative Virgil Abloh. Working together in Murakami’s Tokyo studio, Abloh and Murakami produced a unique series of works in which their styles and trademarks intersect in a series of vibrant mashups. Their first exhibition was presented in Gagosian Gallery London (21/2-7/3/18).

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive

New collaborative works by Takashi Murakami and Virgil Abloh are on presentation at the exhibition “Technicolor 2” at Gagosian Gallery in Paris. Undoubtedly, the two represent different spectrums of modern culture, and the rapidly blurring intersection between high art, street art, and fashion and streetwear. No strangers to collaboration, Murakami in the past has collaborated with Issey Miyake, Louis Vuitton, and Vans, while Abloh’s equally exhaustive list of collaborators includes Nike, Jimmy Choo, and the furniture company IKEA. During their recent collaboration, Murakami and Abloh have produced works in which their respective styles and trademarks intersect in a stream of freewheeling, punkish mash-ups. In this exhibition, new iterations of the “TIMES NATURE” (2018) paintings include multimedia works such as “animated” and illuminated paintings, which play on cultural references, ideas of production and reproduction, and concepts of linear time. Two sculptures are included in the exhibition: in “LIFE ITSELF” (2018), an oversize three-dimensional iteration of Murakami’s smiling flower motif sits in the open doorway of a greenhouse-like structure, expressively spray-painted in black; and in “OUR OUTER SPACE” (2018), Mr. DOB, one of Murakami’s many invented characters, emerges from Abloh’s signature four-point arrow logo. In “Glance Past the Future” they took Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 1623 self-portrait and transformed it, he work looks distressed, the layers of ink generating a graphic blur of pink, black, and revealed white, including a partial image of Mr. Dob’s. While projecting itself conceptually forward in time, the work has the look of an old, desecrated street poster. In his protean oeuvre, Murakami draws from sources as diverse as traditional Japanese painting, otaku subculture, Western art theory, Hollywood cinema, and hip-hop. His expansive art production spills over into fashion, film, and commercial commodities both luxurious and cheap, erasing entrenched divisions between high art and pop culture. Abloh, trained as an architect and engineer, works across fashion, architecture, performance, and consumer products, often deconstructing the creative process in public to challenge and analyze existing aesthetic systems and their distribution. The street-couture label Off-White, which he founded in 2013, combines conventional tailoring with more subversive references.

Info: Gagosian Gallery, 4 rue de Ponthieu, 2nd Floor, Paris, Duration: 23/6-28/7/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.gagosian.com