Takashi Murakami – Brooklyn Museum

©2008 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

April 5–July 13, 2008
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery
4th and 5th Floors

The most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of internationally acclaimed Japanese artist Takashi Murakami includes more than ninety works in various media that span the artist’s entire career, installed in more than 18,500 square feet of gallery space.

Born in Tokyo in 1962, Murakami is one of the most influential and acclaimed artists to have emerged from Asia in the late twentieth century, creating a wide-ranging body of work that consciously bridges fine art, design, animation, fashion, and popular culture. He received a Ph.D. from the prestigious Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he was trained in the school of traditional Japanese painting known as Nihonga, a nineteenth-century mixture of Western and Eastern styles. However, the prevailing popularity of anime (animation) and manga (comic books) directed his interest toward the art of animation because, as he has said, “it was more representative of modern day Japanese life.” American popular culture in the form of animation, comics, and fashion are among the influences on his work, which includes painting, sculpture, installation, and animation, as well as a wide range of collectibles, multiples, and commercial products.

The exhibition © MURAKAMI explores the self-reflexive nature of Murakami’s oeuvre by focusing on earlier work produced between 1992 and 2000 in which the artist attempts to explore his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity, as well as through self-portraiture created since 2000. Two works examining these subjects were a part of a group show, My Reality: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation, presented at the Brooklyn Museum in 2001.

Among the works included in this large-scale survey tracing the trajectory of Murakami’s artistic development are many of his acclaimed sculpture figures including the 23-foot-high Tongari-kun (2003–4); Miss Ko2 (1997), a long-legged waitress who has become one of the artist’s signature characters; and Hiropon (1997), a Japanese girl jumping a rope created by milk spurting from her gargantuan breasts. Among the paintings on view will be Tan Tan Bo (2001), as well as Tan Tan Bo Puking—a.k.a. Gero Tan (2002).
                                        Information courtesy Brooklyn Museum

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SANAA: Works 1998-2008

TEN YEAR SURVEY OF SANAA’S WORK
PRESENTED AT THE NEW MUSEUM

A Decade of New Work—
Ranging from Museum, Education, Commercial, and Residential Commissions to Furniture and Housewares

March 28‑June 15, 2008

New York, NY… The New Museum is currently hosting an exhibition of work by the highly regarded firm Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA, designers of the institution’s recently opened building on the Bowery.The exhibition will present commissions and projects spanning the last decade, a highly productive period when their projects like The 21 Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art; and the new New Museumin New York won them considerable critical acclaim and public recognition.

“SANAA:Works 1998-2008,”
a collaboration between the New Museum’s Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director and Karen Wong, Director of External Affairs, and SANAA, is thefirst overview of their work in New York and provides an opportunity for the public to see the new New Museum in the context of SANAA’s practice and achievements.

The exhibition takes the form of an environment rather than a traditional exhibition, exploiting and further exploring Sejima and Nishizawa’s vision of the Museum lobby as, in their words, “a kind of constantly animated public-private living room where visitors can look, eat, read, shop, discover, and reflect among new art and new ideas.”

The exhibition will be on view from March 28 through June 15, 2008.

With “SANAA: Works 1998-2008″
Sejima and Nishizawa will present new cultural, educational, commercial, and residential commissions completed in the last decade as well as projects under development and prototypes for new design objects, all in a garden-like atmosphere punctuated by trees, plants, and furniture woven throughout the installation.

Pratt Talk

 

ARTISTS
SHELLEY ESHKAR
MICHAEL JOAQUIN GREY
PAUL KAISER
CAROLEE
SCHNEEMANN

PARTICIPATE IN PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM
AT PRATT MANHATTAN GALLERY APRIL 1

Symposium Moderated by Whitney Curator Chrissie Iles to be Presented in Conjunction withCurrent “Impermanent Markings” Exhibition NEW YORK, N.Y., April 1, 2008 – Pratt Manhattan Gallery will present “In Conversation,” a free public symposium in conjunction with the gallery’s “Impermanent Markings” exhibition at 6 p.m. onTuesday, April 1 at 144 West 14th Street. The symposium will be moderated by Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and will include artists Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser from The OpenEnded Group, Michael Joaquin Grey, and Carolee Schneemann.“Impermanent Markings,” considers both universal impermanence and the individual artist’s mark and seeks to define drawing in very broad terms through media such as sand, fire, earth, water, code motion capture, performance, video, and installation and is on view through April 17, 2008.The exhibition is curated by Linda Lauro-Lazin, artist and professor of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute, and features work byJean-Pierre Hébert; Ana Mendieta; Oscar Muñoz; The OpenEnded Group: Marc Downie, Shelley Eshkar,and Paul Kaiser; C.E.B. Reas; Carolee Schneemann; and Camille UtterbackMichael Joaquin Grey is an artist and inventor whose works extend the boundaries of art, science, and

media. He is the inventor of ZOOB, an award-winning toy modeling system.

The OpenEnded Group consists of digital artists Marc Downie, Shelley Eshkar, and Paul Kaiser. The

group creates work for stage, screen, gallery, page, and public space.

Carolee Schneemann is a multidisciplinary artist whose video, film, performance, art, and installation

work explores the body, sexuality, and technology.

The exhibition is free and open to the public. For more information and podcasts, visit

www.pratt.edu/exhibitions