Takashi Murakami: Learning the Magic of Painting

Galerie Perrotin, Paris presents Takashi Murakami’s 12th solo exhibition with the gallery over more than 20 years of collaboration. Spanning across the 3 spaces in Paris, more than 40 recent and heretofore never seen artworks have been gathered for this special occasion. Some of the works were displayed until recently at Murakami’s major solo retrospective “The 500 Arhats,” which was on view at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo from 2015 to early 2016. These include a monumental multi-panel painting entitled “A Picture of Lives Wriggling in the Forest at the Deep End of the Universe” (2015), conceived as an anthology of iconic themes of Murakami’s cosmology, from 727, Gerotan/Mr. Dob, Dragon, and Panda series to mythological animals, lion, elephant, tiger, goat, etc.

A second group of works will focus on the theme of the arhats. “Learning the Magic of Painting” also features a selection of paintings from Murakami’s Ensō series. The subject of these new paintings is one of the most famous motifs in Japanese Zen painting, the Ensō (literally, ‘circle’) that symbolizes emptiness, unity, and in nity in Zen Buddhism, and is also a form of meditation. Lastly, a fourth group of artworks is composed by an entirely new series of diptychs and triptychs inspired by the work of mid-20th century master Francis Bacon.