The contemporary art gallery will exhibit until October 25 the new works of the two designers in the America too exhibition
The Gagosian gallery kicked off today at “America too”, the contemporary art exhibition that will highlight new works by Takashi Murakami and Virgil Abloh, the founder of Off-White, and which will take place at the Beverly Hills site until October 25th.
The artist and designer have created a collaboration on different media, creating layered paintings, large sculptures and the fusion of their respective styles and brands, going beyond the boundaries of fashion, art and popular culture.
In his work, Murakami draws from different sources such as classical Japanese painting, otaku subculture, Western art, Hollywood cinema and hip-hop. His vast artistic production is poured into fashion, cinema and brands, overcoming the established divisions between high art and popular culture.
Virgil Abloh instead, who has studied architecture, has always had a language capable of crossing over fashion, design, performance and consumer products, often challenging and analyzing the existing aesthetic systems and their distribution.
His Off-White street-couture brand c / o Virgil Abloh, founded in 2013, combines the conventional tailoring with more subversive references, while his role as artistic director of the menswear of Louis Vuitton puts his current work of designer in closer dialogue with the collaborations of Murakami with Vuitton, started in 2002.
On show there are works that weave the stylistic codes of the two creatives.
The arrows of Abloh’s Off-White brand are superimposed on Murakami’s iconic rainbow flower, stenciled canvases and images of Mr. Dob, the character created by Murakami and inspired by manga.
Contaminations come to Bernini’s Self-Portrait (1623), which dissolves into a psychedelic whirl of color, in which traces of Mr. Dob transform the youthful silhouette of the Baroque artist. A series of sculptures become oversized, shiny and almost sanguine.
“There is an idea of supremacy in the art world, or that the fine arts are those with the highest status. My collaboration with Virgil is trying to create something completely out of this frame, “commented Murakami.
