New Tokyo Ferry Terminal (Ariake 4-chrome)

Before establishing his own practice, the artist known as Mr. worked as Takashi Murakami’s protégée for almost two decades. Like his teacher, Mr. too makes art in the so-called Superflat mode, a visual vernacular made popular by Murakami which fuses traditional Japanese aesthetics with the flat screen of digital imagery, all viewed in relation to the physical and very real topographical flattening of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Like his mentor, Mr. looks to the Japanese idea of otaku, or cuteness, drawing from manga, anime, and video games to create his sugary yet uncanny figures. In New Tokyo Ferry Terminal (Ariake 4-chrome) (2004-2005), the world, its sunsets and night skies, seems to be contained in the girl’s wide-eyed expression. Purple hair, ice cream-coloured hair tie, and rainbow blush announce her whimsy, yet there is something eerie in her unblinking expression.

Mr.’s art is provocative and incendiary, representing the ‘point where innocence and experience collide, the transition from egoless childhood to adult self-awareness’ (A. Maerkle, ‘Mr.: Out Of Body Experience’, Art Asia Pacific, 1 May 2007). Manifesting a fictionalised life as reality has continual appeal for the artist, and he even lists the invented town of Cupa as his birthplace; in real life, he grew up near Kobe. Mr. graduated from the Sokei Art School in Tokyo, and his recent solo presentations include exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum, and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, and the Musée Guimet in Paris, among others.