Game Over
Massimo De Carlo is pleased to present 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 pop- cultural 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.
The Artist
Tomoo Gokita was born in 1969 in Tokyo, Japan, where he currently lives and works.
Now a leading Japanese contemporary artist on the international art scene, he started as a designer in the 90s, producing a series of newsprint books, some of which gained cult status, such as Lingerie Wrestling (2000). In 2000, he set aside graphic design and dedicated himself entirely to painting.
His work is inspired by 1960s and 70s Japanese and American subcultures as well as vintage magazines, film stills, pornography, and postcards. Combining abstract and expressive brushwork, deformed fi gures, and lowbrow imagery, Gokita’s works are emotionally charged canvases. Although he is widely known for working in greyscale, color has been a recurring feature of his practice since the beginning of his career. Whether working in greyscale or color, Gokita’s paintings have long been characterized by their psychologically charged subject matter. The subjects of his paintings are indeed uncanny portraits, disquieting still lifes, and dream-like abstractions