We’ve always loved Takashi Murakami’s seriously mischievous art, which seems to effortlessly position onto one level playing field all of the cultural, historic and economic forces at work in art today. A few years ago we collaborated with our client Häagen-Dazs to bring an installation of his giant inflatable sculptures to Art Chicago, where they floated high above the more than 40,000 visitors to the fair. A concurrent installation of Murakami’s animated “wink” played continuously at the Michigan Avenue SONY store, keeping a knowing eye on that high tech wonderland of gorgeous gadgets and immersive multi-media.
Murakmai’s retrospective, appropriately titled / branded “© Murakami”, delighted and confounded audiences and critics last winter at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, not least for its inclusion of a Louis Vuitton boutique, with Murakami-designed products, right in the middle of the exhibition. The show is currently at the Brooklyn Museum, where it’s again working its peculiar magic. Roberta Smith in the The New York Times calls Murakami’s work “spellbinding…stuffed with questions of art and commerce, high and low, public brand and private expression, mass production and exquisite craft.”