PRESENTATION: Mr.-Beyond the Alley, There…
Mr. (Masakatsu Iwamoto) approaches the visual language of anime and manga as a means of examining Japanese culture, fusing high and low forms of contemporary expression. Like his fellow Superflat artists, such as Takashi Murakami, Mr. utilizes otaku, the “cute” Japanese subculture that is marked by an obsession with adolescence, manga, anime, and video games. Alongside his interest in otaku is an engagement with the 1960s Italian art movement, Arte Povera.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive
Reflecting Mr.’s long-standing commitment to critically examining how both images and desire circulate in global internet culture the exhibition “Beyond the Alley, There…” features new, large-scale paintings, shaped head and body paintings, and works on paper. Central to Mr.’s practice is otacu*, an increasingly prevalent and popular Japanese subculture of fandom oriented around reclusion and retreat into immersive fantasy worlds, particularly manga and anime. Interested in bridging popular visual and high-art cultures, the artist has compared himself to a translator, positioning anime, manga, and other hallmarks of otaku* in the realm of fine art for a global audience. Far from a dispassionate observer, Mr. is himself immersed in this culture, and has noted that his works are at times reflections of his personal interests in fantasy and imaginative world-building. As he reinterprets otaku* aesthetics for an international art world, Mr. is simultaneously outsider and insider, reporter and diarist. Mr. is particularly well known for his associations with Superflat, a contemporary postmodern Japanese movement that draws inspiration from the compressed treatment of space and bold planes of color that appear throughout Japanese art and culture—from 19th-century ukiyo-e** prints, to pop art, to anime. Mr.’s influences are expansive and eclectic, and the artist also has a particular affinity for the Arte Povera movement for its use of unconventional materials and its reverence for the detritus of everyday life. Across his practice, Mr. has reinterpreted Arte Povera’s central concerns for a contemporary context of environmental catastrophe, and prior work has responded directly to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster in his native Japan. In the exhibition Mr. conjures a fantasy world that is paradoxically inundated with the quotidian and the commercial, and emojis, fast-food logos, slang phrases, and other artifacts of the ordinary appear throughout this latest body of work. In “Sakura—The End of Summer, Toward Autumn” (2021), a swirl of cartoon icons, social media notifications, and innocuous phrases in brightly colored bubble letters are reflected in the child’s wide eyes. Enormous eyes with reflections painted on their surfaces are at the center of all of these shaped compositions, subtly alluding to the complex inner lives Mr. creates for each of his characters. Other works in the exhibition reflect Mr.’s recently heightened interest in layered surfaces and urban spaces. In these compositions, central figures begin to recede, becoming integrated into a saturated visual field of graffitied surfaces and storefronts. Despite their fictive nature, the artist’s many-layered, imaginative worlds are never disconnected from the real, and at every turn Mr. reveals commercial imagery and the visual culture of the mundane to be saturated with desire and fantasy.
* Otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime and manga. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in Manga Burikko.
** Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica.
Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 501 W 24th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 17/3-23/4/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com
