Tomoo Gokita: Game Over at Massimo De Carlo, Milano
March 3 – July 18, 2020
All images courtesy of the gallery and the artist.
PR: Massimo De Carlo is curretnly presenting “Game Over” Tomoo Gokita’s first solo exhibition in Milan, and second with the gallery.
Tokyo based artist Tomoo Gokita is known for his signature painting style that marries popcultural archetypes with surreal, noirish flights of fancy. His artistic vocabulary barrels across illustration, soft pornography, abstraction and calligraphy, with perfect control, velvety surfaces and tonal range transforms ordinary scenes into warped and absurd realities.
Game Over is Tomoo Gokita’s first venture into painting in colour, a departure from the artists monochromatic style. In this exhibition, Gokita presents a selection of 16 paintings ranging from large to small scale, using sultry pastel colours reminiscent of spring colours or seasonal change, continues his streak of representing amorphous contemporary personae with slight sexual undertones. The reappearing elusive figure of Regina is represented in the majority of the canvases, creating this anonymous yet intriguing centripetal theme to the exhibition.
Each room is a journey between the artists’ abstract and figurative makings where eroticism, painterly gesture and vibrant tints tell of an oneiric dimension that encompasses love, gender and daydreams.
Tomoo Gokita was born in 1969 in Tokyo, Japan, where he currently lives and works. His solo shows include: Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, J (2018); Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, J (2017; 2012); Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY, US (2016; 2014); Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, US (2015); Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Chiba, J (2014); Aliceday Gallery, Bruxelles, BE (2010); ATM Gallery, New York, NY, US (2006). His work was part of group exhibitions at: Taguchi Collection of 21st Century Art: From Andy Warhol to Yoshitomo Nara, Hiratsuka Museum of Art, Kanagawa, J (2018); Third Space/Shifting Conversations about Contemporary Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, US (2017); Shared Space, Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans, FL, US (2015); Wonderful my Art, Kawaguchiko Museum of Art, Yamanashi, J (2013); The Unseen Relationship: Form and Abstraction, Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Chiba, J (2012); VOCA 2009: The Vision of Contemporary Art, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, J (2009); Mail Order Monsters, Deitch Projects, New York, NY, US (2007); Mail Order Monsters, Peres Projects, Berlino, DE (2007).
