Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami is one of a handful of artists that has transformed the landscape of contemporary art through his engagement with ideas surrounding production and the marketplace. Alongside his studio practice and the invention of a conceptual style of painting he termed “Superflat,” Murakami founded the Hiropon Factory in 1996, which functioned as a school, studio and factory. In 2001 he renamed the company Kaikai Kiki Co, with the main branch in Tokyo and a satellite office in Long Island City, NY. Kaikai Kiki Co. is more than an artist’s atelier, supporting Murakami’s multifarious productions (including curatorial projects, collaborative projects and animation works), a whole stable of Japanese artists that he represents, as well as the management of the GEISAI art fair which presents the work of artists who represent themselves in solo booths, rather than galleries that represent artists. He has become a veritable industry unto himself. One of the most well know contemporary artists working today, Murakami is represented by a powerhouse triumvirate of galleries with outposts around the globe including Gagosian, Galerie Perrotin, and Blum & Poe. He has had solo museum exhibitions at some of the most venerated institutions in the world including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2001); the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris and the Serpentine Gallery, London (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007), which traveled to the Brooklyn Museum (2008), the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2008) and Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2009); and Château de Versailles, France (2010). Last year he exhibited the sprawling Murakami - Ego exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni at the Alriwaq Hall at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, and is currently showing Takashi in Superflat Wonderland at Plateau, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul Korea through December 8th of this year. Murakami lives and works in Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles.