Takashi Murakami.

Danilowicz, Nathan

Blum & Poe, Los Angeles CA May 3 * June 14, 2008

Eyes are common tokens in Takashi Murakami's fetishistic repertoire. So it is not strange to see them loom large in the eight new paintings at Blum &Poe. Three of the works continue Murakami's daruma portraits from last year's show at Gagosian in New York, essentially modeled after Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism. These doll heads, as well as the landscapes and abstractions, stray from the artist's Otaku-based cultural concerns, taking a more overtly skeptical and art historical turn. No sign anywhere in Blum &Poe's immaculate white cube of the semi-pricey Murakami merchandise featured at the artist's mid-career retrospective at MOCA earlier this year. Where Japanese culture may tolerate such fluidity between fine art, design, animation, and marketing, for this exhibition Murakami plays his high art card to get around the standard Western demarcation over the body of "Oriental" art.

The title of the show, "Davy Jones' Tear," refers to the villainous Bill Nighy character in the last two Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It is perhaps the only pop reference in the show, which the odd pairing of those smiling, Edo-inspired chrysanthemums in Kansei Gold and Kansei Platinum (all work 2008) winkingly seems to acknowledge. In the same room one finds Dumb Compass, Infinity, and Davy Jones' Tear, representing "abstract," almost oracular teardrops or eyes rendered in silkscreen, drips, ink blots, Benday dots, and calligraphic brushstrokes. Not surprisingly, the resulting surfaces look synthetic, if not wildly eccentric. While standing in the center of the gallery, surrounded by almost ten-foot-high depictions of scintillating floral and globular forms, one gets the uncomfortable feeling of being watched.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In a separate room there are three daruma head paintings, with lengthy Zen titles like, From the perceived debris of the universe, we are still yet unable to reach the castle of nirvana. Oddly, these acrylic-and-platinum-leaf canvases are even slicker than their abstract companions. The compositions look very similar, except that one of the deep reddish-brown heads has been squashed horizontally and given a pointed urna (or third eye). And unlike the "eyes" in the first room, these more personalized if bleary ones don't make direct contact, but seem transfixed on some other plane of existence.

In Japan daruma or dharma dolls are a popular gift, often purchased at Buddhist temples. The eyes are purposefully left blank, for the recipient is meant to fill in the doll's right eye while thinking of a wish. And should the wish come true, the doll's left eye is filled in. Initiating a task involves something similar. It begins by applying the first eye and then putting the doll in a prominent place to act as a reminder. Once the task is completed, the second eye can be added. With Murakami's figures, however, the daruma game is turned on its head, leaving us in each case with a pair of skewed eyes. Is the artist suggesting that the paintings have been completed and their wishes fulfilled, or are they just perfunctory acts of filling in? In many ways, Murakami's work is about completion or finish, inviting the thought that you always need a third eye in the back of your head or on your forehead to see the way ahead.