Takashi Murakami HEADS↔HEADS at PERROTIN

James Kalm asks the inconvenient question “ART INTO COMMERCE IN ITS MOST GRANILOQUENT MANIFESTATION…?”
Your half-assed art reporter has pedaled by the new Perrotin Gallery space on Orchard Street dozens of times since it opened, without taking in the full tour. After receiving requests from his world wide audience, last Friday, your correspondent dipped into “Takashi Murakami HEADS↔HEADS” and trudged through the three floor exhibition. This is Murakami’s first show in New York in a while, and it’s a great chance to see a major selection of works from a couple of series, and ponder the artist’s place in today’s painting/arts community.

The first floor presents a series of mural sized paintings composed of “smiley faced flowers”, layered on shiny silver and gold-leafed grounds, intentionally pushing the aesthetics of kitsch to new levels. The upper two floors are works of or related to Murakami’s “Homage to Francis Bacon”. Though inspired by Bacon, these works take the masters angst and recreate it as synthetically sweetened neon-cartoons. These pieces are obsessively overworked, and feature a lacquered finish covering every inch of their tediously wrought surfaces. The huge mural “Transcendent Attacking a Whirlwind” is the final piece in the show and might provide a slight redemption to the foregoing display.

Whatever one might think of this presentation, the Parrotin Gallery space is museum quality, and worth a visit, just to see how the gallery culture of the Lower East side has, and will be changed forever. This program was recorded May 11, 2018, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

https://www.perrotin.com/