ZHONG CHENG

Zhong Cheng 2024 Autumn Auction「Modern And Contemporary Art」

  • Zhong Cheng 2020 Autumn Auction「Modern And Contemporary Art」
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    198

    TOMOO GOKITA (b.1969)

    Los Lobos

    2018

    Acrylic on Canvas
    259 x 194 cm

    Signed on the reverse : Tomoo Gokita, dated 2018 and titled in English

    Estimate TWD 13,000,000-18,000,000
    USD 439,800-608,900
    HKD 0-0

    Hammer Price TWD 15,600,000
    USD 537,005
    HKD 4,193,548

Provenance：Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Private Collection , Tokyo Acquired from the above by the present owner

Illustrated：

Exhibition："PEEKABOO," Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2018.4.14-2018.6.24

Exposition：

“Mr.Gokita's vocabulary barrels across illustration, pornography, abstraction, children's drawing, calligraphy and sign-painting, with a perfect control, velvety surfaces and tonal range that makes black-and-white feel like living color.”
- Roberta Smith, New York Times Art Critic

Tomoo Gokita made a name for himself in the art world with highly distinct monochrome paintings. He was born in 1969 in Tokyo. Growing up, his father, who was designing the advertising spread for Playboy magazine at the time, influenced him and piqued his interests in prints and magazines. He began with illustration and graphic design and drew recognitions with his impromptu sketches. Most of his works are idiosyncratic grayscale abstracts and decomposed portraiture mixed with surrealistic elements, which take on the appearance of collage art or vintage photos. He started gaining international attention with his first book, Lingerie Wrestling. Since then, his works have been greeted with wide acclaims in New York, Los Angeles and Berlin, including a series of solo exhibitions at Dinter Fine Art Gallery in New York after 2005; the 2014 The Great Circus in Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in Sakura, Japan; the sold-out solo exhibition at Mary Boone Gallery from the same year; solo exhibitions at Taka Ishii Gallery in 2008, 2012 and 2017. In 2018, he was invited to Art Basel in Hong Kong. After spending years doing illustration and graphic design, he is now a highly sought-after artist of abstract portraits in Japan. Collectors of his works include Asian pop star T.O.P. and the American artist and designer KAWS. Judging from his bursting creative energy as well as the diversity and brilliance exuded from his art, one can expect more greatness from him in the foreseeable future.

Gokita’s love for music prompts him to study record-albums rather than art catalogs. He sees himself as being more keen to identifying colorful album covers in record stores rather than artworks in museums and galleries. Therefore, he names his artworks after singers, songs and album titles. Art is a perpetual flow of inspirational energy. Much like the encounter between people who vibrate at comparable frequency, at times, paintings inspire music. At times, vice versa. The possibility created by the clashing of artistic forms is infinite and boundless. Gokita “speaks” with innumerous number of intuitive paintings, “Many of my paintings are created on a whim for no particular reason. The only plausible cause might be that I simply can’t stop painting.” The portraits might be without voices, emotions or even faces. However, overflowing between the simplistic black and white are surprising connotations, ranging from Jazz, wrestling, porn magazine to art history. With Americanized portraits, i.e. vibrant and exaggerated clothing; humorous and yet forceful gestures, what he captures is a silhouette of Western culture and its liberated and unruly determination.

The painting, Los Lobos, is named after the American band, Los Lobos. Its music is a fusion of rock and roll, country, blues and Latin rock. The hit song, “La Bamba”, is an example of the band’s highly conceptual and repetitive style. The surrealistic lyrics reveal a touch of nonsensical absurdity with repeating iterations of passion that show traces of anxiety, much like Gokita’s paintings. Los Lobos is covered with a texture so smooth it mimics that of silk. The figures’ bodily details and fingers are barely recognizable. Above their torsos is a common element found in Gokita’s paintings – the decomposed and fragmented faces. In black and white, they create a world immersed in derealization. He seeks ecstatic thrills between abstraction and reality, baring his insanely artistic soul without any disguise. “For whom? For what? I do not know. I wait for ‘silliness’ which lurks behind a kind of fermented unconsciousness, such as the act of eating a picture or putting a paintbrush in one’s ear. ‘Silliness,’ however, doesn’t manifest itself so easily. It is a conundrum. Regardless, to express pictures with words is silly.” The undecipherable abstraction and the palpable air of edginess have become synonymous with Tomoo Gokita, symbolizing products of the clash between art and other disciplines, such as music. The possibility is endless.

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