Arab News Japan

Gagosian, one of the world’s leading art dealerships to showcase Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s traditional and digital artwork in a multifold exhibition entitled “An Arrow through History.”

In the exhibition, the artist aims to present his fans with the contemporary art world that he envisions, which is one that is not reliatnt on a single art form but on “futurist implications.”

Marking Murakami’s first exhibition at Gagosian in New York since 2014 “An Arrow through History” will incorporate Gagosian’s first use of virtual reality, featuring a digital rendering of the 976 and 980 Madison Avenue galleries. It will include paintings, portraits and a number of Superflat pieces based on the Clone X NFT initiative which he developed in collaboration with RTFKT Studios. Clone X is a series of NFT avatars developed as three-dimensional figures that integrate the artist’s unique motifs.

The work that will be displayed at Gagosian will translate the digitally-modeled pieces from NFTs into detailed hand-painted portraits and full-scale figurative sculptures in order to provide visitors with “physical manifestations of art that was created for the metaverse.”

 “The artist’s newest interpretation of his iconic flower motif, Murakami. Flowers combines his influential Superflat aesthetic with a style that evokes nostalgia for the pixelated graphics of 1980s video games, especially those played on the Nintendo Famicon console,” Gagosian said in a statement.

The exhibition “An Arrow through History” will run from May 11 to June 25 at the Gagosian Gallery in New York.

Gagosian has also announced that the gallery will now accept payments in Bitcoin, Ether, and USD Coin, which is made possible through a partnership with the exchange platform Coinbase.

Custom chains by the Crown Collection. (The Crown Collection)

In another move inspired by the transformation of digital artworks into tangible pieces,  Murakami and Steven Zoptoi, the CEO and Co-Founder of RTFKT Studio requested that Ryan Rehbock, the founder of The Crown Collection to produce four custom chains to commemorate the partnership between the two, after the release of the Clone X NFT collaboration.

The result were chains that resemble those worn by several 3-D characters from a digitally-generated collection that was exclusively created. The chains are 18K white gold Miami Cuban link chains that have Murakami’s signature flower on one end, which serves as a lock, and an animated RTFKT logo that mimics Murakami’s style on the other end. Both designs on the chains are made with natural gemstones such as sapphire and topaz.