Murakami

Los Angeles, November 10,2007.

If you haven't yet seen this GORGEOUS exhibit @ the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo- GO NOW!!!!

I first heard about the exhibit at Chuvaness' blog. I was hesitant about going to this show since I'm not really a fan of japanese cartoon-y anime art but I was familiar with Murakami's commercial work and I was completely AMAZED!



The exhibit covered a lot of Murakami's work and included paintings, sculpture, video installations and a display of merchandise where his art was applied.

AND THE LOUIS VUITTON!

They actually installed a mini-Louis Vuitton store within the exhibit which sold LV merchandise made exclusively for the exhibit including special edition NeverFulls (3 sizes), agenda and circular coin purse. I wanted to take home the LV trunk with the mini-croc purses in 30 colors (not for sale). I thought this would sell-out by now but they were still pretty well-stocked. The limited edition prints of his artwork are now all sold out (starting at $895 a pop).

What's amazing is, he actually has paintings which incorporated the LV logo in it.

The later work definitely had the marks of computer aided design (i.e. the vectorized Adobe Illustrator line quality), but his earlier work, which looked entirely computer generated, was even more exciting! They look deceptively simple. One of the techniques he used was to lay down layer upon thick layer of paint and then sanding away parts of it to create an image. The results were awesome! I mean, you just had to be there!

It was great to see the (naughty) fiberglass sculptures. Even better is the parents trying to avert their children's eyes away from them or trying to explain it. Yes, the show attracted a lot of little kids for obvious reasons.
Photo:artnet.com ("My Lonesome Cowboy")

The exhibit is on until Februay 11, 2008. GO!!! NOW!!

Photo: Vinyl Inflatables at the entrance.


www.moca.org