In this presentation, the artist pursues his fascination with the narrative of Japanese art by offering his own interpretations of historical paintings. By “Murakamizing” these iconic images, he ponders the erosion of the nation's ancient splendor; he also considers the ways in which it has been impacted by new aesthetics and values associated with its opening to the West after the end of the Edo period (1603-1868).
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This is the artist's first exhibition with the gallery in France. Understanding the New Cognitive Domain marks the debut of a monumental new 5-by-23-meter painting by Murakami based on the iwai-maku, or stage curtain, that he produced for the Kabuki-za theater in Ginza, Tokyo, in celebration of Japanese Kabuki actor and producer Ichikawa Ebizō XI's assumption of the name Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII, Hakuen. (Kabuki stage names, which specify an actor's style and lineage, are passed down through generations; the Ichikawa family has a roughly 350-year history.) The November 2022 unveiling of Murakami's design, which was commissioned by film director Takashi Miike, coincided with the first performance of Ichikawa Shinnosuke VIII in the November Kichirei Kaomise Grand Kabuki Theater program.
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In three simultaneous presentations spanning two of Gagosian’s New York galleries, at 976 and 980 Madison Avenue, Murakami bridges the physical and digital realms. An Arrow through History incorporates Gagosian’s first use of virtual reality, featuring a digital rendering of the 976 and 980 Madison Avenue galleries. The immersive viewing experience, created by RTFKT and Oncyber, is accessible online via gagosian.com or through a VR headset and allows access to the entire exhibition from anywhere in the world. In addition, visitors on-site can activate numerous custom Snapchat Lenses to view augmented-reality animations in each gallery and on the building’s exterior. This will be Murakami’s first exhibition at Gagosian in New York since 2014 and represents his return to 980 Madison Avenue, where he had his inaugural exhibition with the gallery in 2007.
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Drawing from traditional Japanese painting, sci-fi, anime, and pop culture, Murakami’s oeuvre comprises paintings, sculptures, films, and a stream of commercial products populated by mutating characters of his own creation. His iconoclastic individualism continues the nonconformist legacy of the Edo Eccentrics, a group of eighteenth-century Japanese artists who constructed a powerfully imaginative world filled with bizarre and emotive imagery.
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Murakami and Abloh have created an art, media, and production collaboration in layered paintings, large-scale sculptures, and the merging of their respective trademarks and brand names. Multihyphenate cult figures in their fields, they push against the parameters of fashion, art, and popular culture, provocatively blurring the lines between them. In his protean oeuvre, Murakami draws from sources as diverse as classical Japanese painting, otaku subculture, Western art theory, Hollywood cinema, and hip-hop. His expansive art production spills over into fashion, film, and commercial commodities both luxurious and inexpensive, eschewing entrenched divisions between high art and popular culture.
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Murakami seamlessly blends commercial imagery, anime, manga, and traditional Japanese styles and subjects, revealing the themes and questions that connect past and present, East and West, technology and fantasy. His paintings, sculptures, and films are populated by repeated motifs and evolving characters of his own creation. Together with dystopian themes and contemporary references, he revitalizes narratives of transcendence in continuation of the nonconformist legacy of a group of eighteenth-century Japanese artists known as the Edo eccentrics.
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