MR.

Perrotin is pleased to present ‘Invoke It and a Flower Shall Blossom’, the eighth exhibition of Mr. with the gallery and the fourth in Paris. The show displays a new series of paintings and shaped canvas, two sculptures and a set of works on paper. For a French audience, the work of Japanese artist Mr. is strangely familiar, as it draws on imagery that has become almost ubiquitous. Since the 1980s, anime films, video games, and manga have permeated youth culture almost as much as American productions. Their visual influence is reminiscent of the impact of ukiyo-e (‘floating world’) in late 19th-century Europe and its decisive role in the advent of Modernism. Many contemporary Japanese artists combine and fuse these different visual styles, like the Superflat movement of the 1990s. According to Takashi Murakami, its theorist and foremost exponent, Superflat is not simply a Japanese ‘pop art’ inspired by the entertainment industry. It rather affirms the legitimacy of youth culture aesthetics while embracing the legacy of traditional painting and Buddhist iconography, such as two-dimensionality.