FABRIK CONTEMPORARY ART UNVEILS A NEW SPACE
WITH A MURAKAMI SHOW
10 – 30 September, 2008
Takashi Murakami +
“Artist, Curator, and Brand Promoter Takashi Murakami is a lord of an empire that knows no borders or creative limitations.” – ART + AUCTION
Takashi Murakami is well known in the art scene for making thought-provoking paintings and sculptures, running the influential artist-led art enterprise Kaikai Kiki artist management group, curating the visionary Superflat show, and collaborating on high-end, high profile projects with Louis Vuitton.
Takashi Murakami is often billed as the next Andy Warhol. Like the American pop art icon, he fuses high and low, pulling imagery from consumer culture to produce visually arresting, highly original work. He is vigorously, ingeniously self-promotional. In the past few years, Murakami has swept across the US and Europe, receiving fawning media attention and exhibiting at big-name museums.
THE SPACE
Following a successful run of exhibitions (LOVE ART featuring BANKSY), Fabrik Contemporary Art for the first time opens a new space in Lan Kwai Fong presenting their collection of works by Takashi Murakami and Kaikai Kiki artists Mr. and Chiho Aoshima. The idea was to create a project room in which works could be presented within a focused environment. The gallery will also house their selected collection of Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Maurizio Catellan and the Chapman Brothers.
THE SHOW
The exhibition will show prints and canvases from 2001 to 2008 noting his famous DOB, Murakami's little mouselike leitmotif, a cartoonish and clueless creation whose name derives from the slang expression "dobojite," meaning "why?". DOB was an exceedingly clever invention, as he gave Murakami an alter ego with which to tap into and comment on Japanese society.
Like Warhol, Murakami has turned to silk-screening to get the flat, non-painterly look his art demands. He understands the popular appeal and refreshing accessibility of art as wallpaper or a helium-filled balloon. Most importantly, like Warhol (who once quipped, "I don't read my magazine reviews, I weigh them"), Murakami is well aware of the importance of zealous self-promotion.
THE ARTIST
A highly trained academician steeped in the esoteric art history of Japan, Murakami was born in 1962 in Tokyo, and received his BFA, MFA and PhD from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He founded the Hiropon factory in Tokyo in 1996, which later evolved into Kaikai Kiki Co., a large-scale art production and art management corporation
Murakami’s work has been shown extensively in group exhibitions around the world, and in one-person exhibitions at leading institutions such as Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain, Paris and the Serpentine Gallery, London (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2001); MoCA, Los Angeles (2007); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2008); Museum fur Moderne Künst, Frankfurt (2008) and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2009).
For more information and high resolution images, please contact Jürgen Abergas at info@fabrik-gallery.com
* Press Preview: 10 September 2008, 3-6pm
* Preview (By Invitation only): 10 September 2008, 6-8pm
Gallery Address:
412, 4F Yip Fung Building
2-18 D’Aguilar Street
Central, Hong Kong
Tel +852 2525 4911
