MY GIRLFRIEND IS IN A COMA:
New Japanese Abstraction
@ the Museum of New Art
March 17, Saturday from 6pm to 10pm
Abstract art is an ever-changing Rorschach test.
The best of it allows one to see something new and different at each viewing.
This new series of paintings from Japan seems to bring all these open readings to a full-stop.
This new series of paintings from Japan seems to bring all these open readings to a full-stop.
They do so by simply imprinting each painting with its own specific narrative title, culture and author.
Yet, in the same stroke, each sends the viewer on a larger quest for meaning and expression
rarely found in abstract art: by this forced suggestion of narrative.
The title painting [My Girlfriend Is In A Coma] now becomes not simply a spiral of death,
The title painting [My Girlfriend Is In A Coma] now becomes not simply a spiral of death,
but, by its title and animated gesture,
an awkward vortex of cubes and colored compartments
that compress a girl's life into a rarefied meaning,
not simply of her unique life but, in a much larger sense, of art itself.
- Jessica Hopkins, Chief Curator @ the Museum of New Art
including:
Taki Murakishi
Nobu Matsui
Kiko Kobayashi
Ryuichi Nakamura
Reiko Yamamoto
Kenzu Nagawa
MY GIRLFRIEND IS IN A COMA: New Japanese Abstraction
In 2001 while at the Tokyo University of the Arts, these six students first joined talent as members of the progressive indie band Stray Dog, recording two albums for Mongrel Records over the next few years. During this same period, as visual artists, the group rebelled in the classroom against the traditional Japanese style of painting, or Nihonga.
In 2000, Jap-Pop artist Takashi Murakami published his "Superflat" theory: A theory that posits there is a legacy of flat, two-dimensional imagery which has existed throughout Japanese art and continues today in Japanese comic books and animations, manga and anime.
Taki Murakishi:
We use the term "neo-concrete" [Gutaïteki] to describe and to differentiate ourselves from those before us who have committed to Western ideas of geometric depth and tactile, multi-layered abstraction. We embrace Takashi Murakami's "Superflat" theory. But unlike Murakami, we embrace those Japanese traditions of "high" art, such as Ukiyo-e, and not simply the "low" as with Murakami. And yet, like Murakami, this neo-Gutai style also differentiates itself from the Western approach to abstraction in our emphasis on flat surface and the use of simple planes of color and gesture.
Taki Murakishi
Born in Tokyo in 1977. He currently lives and works between Tokyo and Detroit. Murakishi creates portraits of his friends, the music scene and Tokyo, only to twist, layer and rework them into abstractions of his life.
"So-called abstract painting has never been wholly original, has never been its own end. Such creation exists only where art presents images that take nothing from what has been imagined, neither repeating or modifying a particular artist's vision, but inventing its own, liberated from both and all.
One must move toward an art where everything must be sacrificed to the truths and necessities of a new millennium, toward those elements of a pure and eternal art, full and infinitely beyond our known experience. One must move toward the pixel and beyond."
- Taki Murakishi, from INVENTING THE PIXEL: ABSTRACTION IN THE 21st CENTURY
Nobu Matsui
Born in in Sasebo in 1980. Matsui is one of the most important and influential artists working today. Uniquely, Matsui's art combines intellectual rigor with breathtaking romance; in his hands, stark and often extremely challenging modernity segues with references to Japan's lost past. He grew up next to an American military base, which also taught him many cultural lessons and influenced his thinking.
"Everything that happens in art is shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy."
Kiko Kobayashi
Born in Kagoshima in 1979. Kobayashi claims to hold the world record for number of artworks created with over 300,000 (according to the Guinness Book of World Records). She is often called the "Warhol of Japan.".
"What transforms this world is — art. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Art alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with an artist's, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed."
Ryuichi Nakamura
Born in Toyohashi in the Aishi Prefecture, in 1980.
"I have the impression that many women have been able, instinctively, to sniff out this loneliness of mine, which I have confided only to my canvas, and this in recent years has become one of the causes of my being taken advantage of. That is what I mean when I say that I am no longer human. I am only my art."
Reiko Yamamoto
Born in Nagoya in 1981. As a child Reiko had very bad health so she studied at home, where she was introduced by her mother into the world of the arts and started drawing and painting as part of her early therapy.
"With art you can produce high value from almost nothing."
Kenzu Nagawa
Born in Osaka in 1976. Nagawa is considered to be the first of the six to receive national renown. His art has moved Japanese art trends away from the Jap-Pop style over the last few years.
"High or low, Japanese art has always had a fixed hierarchy. But if you want to do original work here you must start young, even though young people are always those most limited by hierarchies. As we break new ground, we must continue to force them to do original work."
The Museum of New Art (MONA)
- Jessica Hopkins, Chief Curator @ the Museum of New Art
including:
Taki Murakishi
Nobu Matsui
Kiko Kobayashi
Ryuichi Nakamura
Reiko Yamamoto
Kenzu Nagawa
MY GIRLFRIEND IS IN A COMA: New Japanese Abstraction
In 2001 while at the Tokyo University of the Arts, these six students first joined talent as members of the progressive indie band Stray Dog, recording two albums for Mongrel Records over the next few years. During this same period, as visual artists, the group rebelled in the classroom against the traditional Japanese style of painting, or Nihonga.
In 2000, Jap-Pop artist Takashi Murakami published his "Superflat" theory: A theory that posits there is a legacy of flat, two-dimensional imagery which has existed throughout Japanese art and continues today in Japanese comic books and animations, manga and anime.
Taki Murakishi:
We use the term "neo-concrete" [Gutaïteki] to describe and to differentiate ourselves from those before us who have committed to Western ideas of geometric depth and tactile, multi-layered abstraction. We embrace Takashi Murakami's "Superflat" theory. But unlike Murakami, we embrace those Japanese traditions of "high" art, such as Ukiyo-e, and not simply the "low" as with Murakami. And yet, like Murakami, this neo-Gutai style also differentiates itself from the Western approach to abstraction in our emphasis on flat surface and the use of simple planes of color and gesture.
Taki Murakishi
Born in Tokyo in 1977. He currently lives and works between Tokyo and Detroit. Murakishi creates portraits of his friends, the music scene and Tokyo, only to twist, layer and rework them into abstractions of his life.
"So-called abstract painting has never been wholly original, has never been its own end. Such creation exists only where art presents images that take nothing from what has been imagined, neither repeating or modifying a particular artist's vision, but inventing its own, liberated from both and all.
One must move toward an art where everything must be sacrificed to the truths and necessities of a new millennium, toward those elements of a pure and eternal art, full and infinitely beyond our known experience. One must move toward the pixel and beyond."
- Taki Murakishi, from INVENTING THE PIXEL: ABSTRACTION IN THE 21st CENTURY
Nobu Matsui
Born in in Sasebo in 1980. Matsui is one of the most important and influential artists working today. Uniquely, Matsui's art combines intellectual rigor with breathtaking romance; in his hands, stark and often extremely challenging modernity segues with references to Japan's lost past. He grew up next to an American military base, which also taught him many cultural lessons and influenced his thinking.
"Everything that happens in art is shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy."
Kiko Kobayashi
Born in Kagoshima in 1979. Kobayashi claims to hold the world record for number of artworks created with over 300,000 (according to the Guinness Book of World Records). She is often called the "Warhol of Japan.".
"What transforms this world is — art. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Art alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with an artist's, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed."
Ryuichi Nakamura
Born in Toyohashi in the Aishi Prefecture, in 1980.
"I have the impression that many women have been able, instinctively, to sniff out this loneliness of mine, which I have confided only to my canvas, and this in recent years has become one of the causes of my being taken advantage of. That is what I mean when I say that I am no longer human. I am only my art."
Reiko Yamamoto
Born in Nagoya in 1981. As a child Reiko had very bad health so she studied at home, where she was introduced by her mother into the world of the arts and started drawing and painting as part of her early therapy.
"With art you can produce high value from almost nothing."
Kenzu Nagawa
Born in Osaka in 1976. Nagawa is considered to be the first of the six to receive national renown. His art has moved Japanese art trends away from the Jap-Pop style over the last few years.
"High or low, Japanese art has always had a fixed hierarchy. But if you want to do original work here you must start young, even though young people are always those most limited by hierarchies. As we break new ground, we must continue to force them to do original work."
The Museum of New Art (MONA)
7 North Saginaw Street
Pontiac, Michigan - 2nd floor
email: detroitmona@aol.com
email: detroitmona@aol.com
248.210.7560