Live event opens with a gallery reception on Saturday, June 22th from 6–8 PM, featuring the iconic themes from the 2018 blockbuster retrospective at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Takashi Murakami, known to many around the world as Japan’s Andy Warhol, ensures that each of his magnificent works of art reflects his craft and insightful engagement with popular culture, folklore and pop art style, all mixed with traditional Japanese culture. One of today’s most imaginative artists, Murakami is universally recognized for both his fine art and commercial output – including collaborations with hip-hop stars Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, as well as designs for the fashion and beauty industry with Louis Vuitton, Issey Miyake, and Shu Uemura.
MLG’s Retro -Retrospective exhibition to be held in the Galleria Dallas, Level 1, 13350 Dallas Parkway, Dallas, TX and will showcase Murakami’s colorful paintings and work.
Murakami, born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, was influenced by animated films (anime), comic books (manga), and global branding, and creates and adapts his recognizable characters into a style that he has dubbed “Superflat”-a tribute to the two-dimension style of classic Japanese cartoons. The theory posits that there is a legacy of flat, 2-dimensional imagery from Japanese Art history in manga and anime.
“I am not a political artist; my target is children, I found my market, my sweet spot, Okay, this is my zone – for the kids”-, Takashi Murakami.
Takashi Murakami attended the Tokyo University of Arts where he acquired the drafting skills necessary to become an animator but eventually majored in Nihonga, the ‘traditional style of Japanese painting that incorporates conventional artistic conventions, techniques, and subjects. In 1994, Murakami received a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council and spent a year in the PS1 International Studio Program in New York City. During his stay, he was exposed to and highly inspired by Western contemporary artists and the art movement of Simulationism, which engages in a play of relationships between cells, icons and the increasing geometricization of the social space in the world in which we live.
“Murakami’s works are extraordinarily vivid, intricate, and masterfully crafted. One of my personal favorites, Korin: the time of celebration, features long stem flowers in the foreground that are cold pressed onto the background. The work pops because each leaf and flower is rich both in color and detail, and infused with an emoji-like expressive face at the center of every flower. The image’s background is a complex weave of brilliant sections overlapping like torn pieces of paper. One section is bright gold…look closely, and you can see tiny cartoon skulls, a Murakami signature; another consists of designs that look like underwater kelp. The gestalt of the entire work forces the eye to gently move between each section, forever soothing your soul with color”. Don Keenan, Gallery Director
Murakami works have been exhibited in over 82 museums around the globe including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan Society, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow. Most recently his first retrospective was installed at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada.
Takashi Murakami is one of the family of superb 20th and 21stcentury artists, such as Warhol, Haring, Chagall, Picassoand Miróthat MLG proudly offers at their fine art galleries located in nine cities including New York, New Orleans, Maui, La Jolla, Costa Mesa, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.
Martin Lawrence Galleries
Opening Reception, Saturday, June 22 from 6–8 PM
Galleria Dallas, Level 1, 13350 Dallas Parkway, Dallas, Texas
DALLAS@MARTINLAWRENCE.COM
(972) 546-2988
About Martin Lawrence Galleries
Since 1978, Martin Lawrence Galleries (MLG)-headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut with nine gallery locations nationwide including New York, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, New Orleans, San Francisco, Costa Mesa, La Jolla, Maui has been assisting and advising collectors as they consider acquiring fine art. (MLG), has prided and defined ourselves as both publishers of fine art prints and sculpture from the most talented contemporary artists-both North American and European-and home to modern and contemporary masters like Picasso, Chagall, Warhol, Calder, Magritte, Basquiat, and Murakami.We are incredibly proud to have lent and exhibited over 200 masterworks, created by more than 30 different artists, to 30+ world-class museums around the globe…including the Louvre, the Pompidou, the Metropolitan, the Whitney, the National Gallery, the Tate and the Hermitage- where we are the sole sponsor of the first ever exhibition of the work of Erté, the father of art deco and we proudly publish works by artists including Kondakova, Hallam, Bertho, Fressinier, Lalonde and Deyber. For more information, visit martinlawrence.com.
For further information and images contact:
Katia Graytok
- 203.989.2073
