MR.: THOSE THAT BRING COLOR TO LIFE AND LIVING
Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce Those that Bring Color to Life and Living, an exhibition of new works by pioneering Japanese artist Mr., marking the artist’s debut solo presentation in the United Kingdom.
October 31 – November 16, 2024
A former protégé of Takashi Murakami, the artist is well known for his associations with Superflat, a contemporary postmodern Japanese movement pioneered by Murakami that draws inspiration from the compressed treatment of space and bold planes of color that appear throughout Japanese art and culture—from 19th-century ukiyo-e prints, to pop art, to anime and manga. Mr.’s participation in the 2000 traveling exhibition Superflat (organized by Murakami) played a crucial role in earning him international attention and recognition.
Mr.’s influences are expansive and eclectic, extending beyond the Superflat genre; the artist also has a particular affinity for the 1960s Italian Arte Povera movement for its use of unconventional materials and its reverence for the overlooked objects of everyday life. Mr.’s earliest paintings and drawings were done on store receipts, takeout menus, and other scraps of transactional detritus.
Across varied mediums, the works on view in Those that Bring Color to Life and Living explore otaku—an increasingly prevalent and popular Japanese subculture oriented around reclusion and retreat into immersive fantasy worlds, particularly manga and anime. Mr. specifically situates his engagement with otaku amidst postwar Japanese history. Having grown up during Japan’s postwar “economic miracle” period, Mr. often exercises his art as a weapon against social expectations.
Interested in bridging popular visual and high-art cultures, Mr. has compared himself to a translator, positioning anime, manga, and other hallmarks of otaku in the realm of fine art for a global audience. As he reinterprets otaku aesthetics for an international art world in Those that Bring Color to Life and Living, Mr. is simultaneously outsider and insider, reporter and diarist.