TOMOO GOKITA

Since the 2000 publication of his first book Lingerie Wrestling, Tomoo Gokita has won many fans with his acclaimed drawings and black and white gouache paintings. Gokita has also exhibited his works abroad to strong accolade. His style and technique continue to evolve as he perennially pushes his practice in new directions. Although he is best known for his black and white works, he has in fact employed a rich array of visual vocabulary to produce a variety of pieces including series of blue paintings, stenciled works, collages, and sculptures. From the start of 2020, Gokita has been making colour paintings; his solo exhibition held in Italy in March consisted exclusively of colour works.

The exhibition MOO will feature Gokita’s latest works made in colour on canvas with acrylics and pastels. In the past, Gokita’s works were inspired by old foreign magazines, photographs, and other printed matter. The latest works featured in this exhibition have no reference. Their imagery is based instead on crossings between the artist’s experience and memory and forms created by chance. In these new pieces, Gokita uses a soft tone and unique palette to address a variety of subjects. The paintings combine seemingly effortless expression and rich textures to suggest an evolutionary step in the artist’s oeuvre. The fruitful transformations that Gokita gracefully achieves by altering material and process also highlight the unwavering essence of his practice. We sincerely hope that you will take this opportunity to view Gokita’s very impressive latest series of works.

A catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

Born in 1969 in Tokyo. In the late 1990s, Gokita received acclaim for drawings made with charcoal and ink on paper. His first book Lingerie Wrestling was published in 2000. Starting with a show in New York in 2006, Gokita has exhibited his works in solo exhibitions internationally. In 2012, his work was included in The Unseen Relationship: Form and Abstraction held at Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art. In 2014, his solo exhibition THE GREAT CIRCUS was held at the same. In April 2018, his solo exhibition PEEKABOO was held at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. His books and exhibition catalogues include Shuffle Tetsudō Shōka [shuffle railroad songs] (Tokyo: Tennen Bunko, 2010); 777 (Tokyo: 888 Books, 2015); Holy Cow (Tokyo: Taka Ishii Gallery, 2017); and PEEKABOO (Tokyo: Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation, 2018). He is currently based in Tokyo.