Gagosian Paris presents Technicolor 2 featuring new collaboration works by Takashi Murakami and Virgil Abloh, following their first exhibition, Future History, at Gagosian London.
Virgil Abloh (left) and Takashi Murakami
During their recent collaboration, Murakami and Abloh have produced works in which their respective styles and trademarks intersect in a stream of freewheeling, punkish mash-ups.
Murakami & Abloh: "TECHNICOLOR 2" installation view
The exhibition includes multimedia works such as 'animated' and illuminated paintings, which play on cultural references, ideas of production and reproduction, and concepts of linear time. Two sculptures are also featured in this show: 'Life Itself' (2018), an oversize three-dimensional iteration of Murakami’s smiling flower motif sitting in the open doorway of a greenhouse-like structure, expressively spray-painted in black; and in 'Our Outer Space' (2018), Mr. DOB, one of Murakami’s many invented characters, emerging from Abloh’s signature four-point arrow logo.
Murakami & Abloh: LIFE ITSELF (2018)
In his protean oeuvre, Takashi Murakami draws from sources as diverse as traditional 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 cheap, erasing entrenched divisions between high art and pop culture.
Murakami & Abloh: “Our Outer Space” (2018)
Abloh, trained as an architect and engineer, works across fashion, architecture, performance, and consumer products, often deconstructing the creative process in public to challenge and analyze existing aesthetic systems and their distribution. The street-couture label Off-White, which he founded in 2013, combines conventional tailoring with more subversive references.
Murakami & Abloh: "TECHNICOLOR 2" installation view
Murakami x Abloh: “Technicolor 2”
Location: Gagosian Paris
Address: 4 rue de Ponthieu, 2nd Floor, Paris 75008
Exhibition date: June 23 - July 28, 2018
Opening hours:
Tuesday - Saturday｜11am - 7pm
Enquiries: 33.1.75.00.05.92