DUBAI.- On the occasion of the opening of Perrotin Dubai, the gallery partnered with ICD Brookfield Place to organize the first exhibition of Takashi Murakami in Dubai.

It follows several major museum exhibitions of the artist in recent years: The Broad, Los Angeles (2022), Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2019), Vancouver Art Gallery (2018) and MCA Chicago (2017). In 2012, the masterful Murakami Ego exhibition across 5000m2 of the Al Riwaq Hall in Doha made history.

Takashi Murakami’s works are in the world’s largest public and private collections, like the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

Also on view: new paintings from the body of work Murakami.Flowers. A component of NFT project Murakami.Flowers, the pixelated flower paintings by Takashi Murakami combine the artist’s iconic Superflat aesthetic with the nostalgia of the graphics of 1970’s Japanese games. The series was conceived around the key number 108 associated with the Buddhist principle of bonnō, or earthly temptations; 108 backgrounds, 108 flower colors, 108 fields. As the artist states, “The existence of Murakami.Flowers extends beyond blockchain.” Each flower of this series is unique, crafted by hand and required thousands of hours of work. Through the adaptation of an NFT into the real world, the artist bridges the physical and digital realms in order to trigger a cognitive revolution.

Lastly, the robot sculpture Arhat completes this exhibition. This ironic self-portrait refers to the theme of the Arhats –the clairvoyant disciples of Buddha– that Murakami has been exploring for the past ten years with the monumental painting The 500 Arhats created for his retrospective in Qatar in 2012.

TAKASHI MURAKAMI
Born in Tokyo in 1962.

The originator and proponent of Superflat theory, which reconstructs Japanese traditional paintings and the origin of Japanese contemporary art through visual premises of anime and manga. Murakami has created numerous characters including Miss Ko² and Mr. DOB that reflect the otaku culture and presents them in the forms of intentionally kitsch sculptures and acutely two-dimensional paintings antithetical to the Western perspective techniques. Murakami’s cultural theory based on subcultures not only deconstructs the highbrow/lowbrow hierarchy but critically illustrates the post-World War II Japanese psychology, establishing a discourse unique to Japan in the increasingly globalizing art scene. The artist continues to attract a wide-ranging audience beyond contemporary art through his multifaceted activities including his collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Kanye West and Drake and focuses on street culture and contemporary ceramics. The final installment of his Superflat trilogy of curated exhibitions, Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture (New York, 2005), was awarded The Best Thematic Museum Show in New York by AICA that year. His first retrospective, ©MURAKAMI (2007 - 2009) toured four cities in North America and Europe, starting with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He has since been holding major solo exhibitions around the world, including at the Palace of Versailles (2010), Al Riwaq Exhibition Hall (Doha, 2012), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2015), Takashi Murakami : Lineage of Eccentrics, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, 2017), and Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong, 2019). In 2021 he collaborated with RTFKT on their NFT project, Clone X, before releasing his own NFT work, Murakami.Flowers, in 2022.