The combination of red and blue with a creature that has long been thought as a symbol of one’s destiny is my attempt to reaffirm my devotion to art - the creative process for the paintings resembled a prayer offering.
--Takashi Murakami
--Takashi Murakami
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by Takashi Murakami. This is his first solo exhibition in Rome.
Two epic paintings - Dragon in Clouds – Red Mutation and Dragon in Clouds – Indigo Blue – each comprise nine panels and measure eighteen meters long. Cloud- and-dragon paintings, known as Unryūzu, were also key references for Soga Shōhaku, an eighteenth century Japanese artist whose eccentric and daring visual inventiveness has been a great inspiration for Murakami. The distinctive representations from traditional Japanese mythology allowed Shōhaku to conjure a fantastic world where overloaded ink drips verged on abstraction, transforming the dragon from more conventional depictions into a vivid, animated monster. Unlike the dragon’s dark associations in Western iconography, the Japanese dragon - an amalgam of the Buddhist iconography that originated in India before reaching China and then Japan - is considered a symbol of good fortune and optimism. Several Buddhist and Shinto temples in Japan are designated as dragon shrines that denote the creature’s exalted status.
Murakami is one of my favorite artist, I love his colors and the size of his work. He is one of the main reasons I work on a large scale. When I first started college I began studying him and his choice of colors were similar to what I am drawn to and what I tend to use when I work. The bigger the better is what I always say!
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