06 Nov 2010

'Murakami's Flowers' on view at Fabrik Contemporary Art

MURAKAMI'S FLOWERS at Fabrik Contemporary Art Gallery

Fabrik Contemporary Art is pleased to present a group of works by Takashi Murakami. The exhibition will highlight works with Murakami's recurring theme of flowers by exploring its evolution and significance merging his traditional Japanese training and background with contemporary culture. The exhibition will include works on print from Murakami's 'I love Prints And So I Make Them.'

Murakami began painting flowers when he was preparing for his entrance into the University of Fine Arts, Tokyo. After getting his PhD in Nihon-ga, a traditional Japanese style of painting in which flowers are a constant motif, he started to teach painting and drawing at a local preparatory school. In his own words, Murakami explains how flowers became a part of his oeuvre, 'When I was preparing for the en- trance exams for the University of Fine Arts, I spent two years drawing flowers. I drew some every day. And the entrance exam in the Nihon-ga section also involved flower drawing. Afterwards, to earn a living, I spent nine years working in a preparatory school, where I taught the students to draw flowers. Once every two days, I would buy flowers for my lesson and make compositions for the students to work on. At the beginning, to be frank, I didn't like flowers, but as I continued teaching in the school, my feelings changed: their smell, their shape – it all made me feel almost physically sick, and at the same time I found them very 'cute'. Each one seems to have its own feelings, its own personality.' (Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Takashi Murakami, Paris, 2002).

Murakami's work has been shown extensively in group exhibitions around the world, and in one-person exhibitions at leading institutions such as Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain, Paris and the Serpentine Gallery, London (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2001; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2001). A comprehensive survey exhibition opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007) and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2008-9). Currently, his sculptural works are exhibited at the Palace of Versailles until December 2010.

About Fabrik Contemporary Art

Established in 2007, Fabrik Contemporary Art, was conceived by three private collectors to acquire unique pieces with a focus on Contemporary Modern and Urban art. Fabrik is committed to being involved in putting Hong Kong at the forefront of the international arts scene by promoting exciting and new artists through 'guerilla exhibitions' - a new concept in Hong Kong which means galleries with no fixed home that pop up in private homes or temporary spaces before moving onto another space. Most guerilla galleries operate using their website only as a showcase of their collection. However in 2008, after a successful Street Art show at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the partners decided to open a space in a non-descript industrial building in Lan Kwai Fong and showed the first contemporary Japanese art exhibition in Hong Kong. Since then, Fabrik Con- temporary Art has curated shows and brought works that had never been shown locally. In 2009, Timeout HK and South China Morning Post hailed Fabrik Contemporary Art as one of the leading and most influential galleries specializing in contemporary art, changing the face of the art scene in Hong Kong.