Takashi Murakami at his new Art and AR Elements exhibition at the LA Broad Museum in LA

Looks like they emptied their brains. There are so many characters like that in Takaki Murakami’s new exhibition, Takashi Murakami: Standing on a Rainbow’s Tail, at the Brod Museum in downtown Los Angeles. Her faces reveal various stages of alarm, breakdown, emptiness, despair, anxiety, confusion, and even a confused, restless calm.

For example, your new drawing 2022, strangers. According to the artist, the work – during an interview in the museum’s outdoor garden – “looks a lot like the space family of the 70s or maybe 60s” and has an atmosphere of “American animation”.

But beyond that, there was the momentum that time spent on social media during the pandemic, and Murakami’s shock at discovering the unexpected things it did to humans.

As the wall decal on the artist’s work explains, “People change drastically between normal times and emergencies, and everyone starts to become strange to me… For example, on social media, I used to seem like a kind, naturalistic guy. Suddenly, an aggressive protest against vaccines began, denying their effectiveness and claiming that the government was lying. I was afraid of people. “I felt that in emergencies, people can change everything, and I wanted that feeling to take shape.”

The 60-year-old famous artist explains: “He was very influenced by Covid. For two years all the houses were assembled. “A lot of things they couldn’t express, and what was crushed inside started to explode.”

“And that’s when I started to see different sides of people I didn’t know. Almost looked like Kafka Metamorphosis“Continues the Japanese artist, known for his understated approach to art, in collaboration with brands such as Louis Vuitton and themes of pain and tragedy, often decorated with poppy flowers and mushrooms (reference to the atomic bombing of Japan during WWII) .

The expansive exhibition, the artist’s first solo show at the venue, features 12 pieces from the museum’s collection, including Murakami’s 24-meter-wide work. In the land of the dead, one foot on a rainbow’s tail (Created in response to Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011), as well as sculptures and wallpaper. The exhibition also includes augmented reality elements throughout the space with QR codes that allow visitors to relive elements of Murakami, such as her cheerful flowers, via cell phones. (Augmented reality assets created with Instagram, Buck Design Studio, Meta’s Spark AR and Broad.) The show runs through September 25th.

Murakami, who also has an exhibition at New York’s Gagosian Gallery until June 25, spoke further. THR The decision to add AR elements to a Broad show, why she doesn’t want to go back to her hectic pre-pandemic travel schedule, and how it affects her work when her son was playing video games for 20 hours straight.

Why did you decide to add AR elements to this exhibition?

Back in the day, for museum exhibits, I used to wallpaper or project on the wall or add any component with a real presentation of the artwork, and so for this exhibit, I initially thought about projecting items on the outside wall, but then the museum really worried about distracting drivers and causing traffic accidents.

Later [idea of] AR technology came along and I took it into account. I knew it [creative director] Kristen [Joy Watts] Looking back on Instagram, I reached out to him to see if we could do something and it went well.

Have you returned to your usual travel schedule?

Yes, but I don’t want to go back to that time. The two years of the pandemic were stressful, about keeping your distance. But the other thing is I’m a geek and sitting in my office and using a pencil or something is very comfortable. I really want to go back to my studio.

You are obviously busy creating NFTs. Do you think they have a long term future?

I’m more involved in the structure of the business. [of NFTs], not just art. The concept is very important: decentralized authority and independent freedom for the creator. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s what I think will last.

What has influenced you lately in the entertainment world?

Many, but during those two years, the influence came from the gaming industry. I don’t play, but my son and daughter mostly play. Fortnite s cross between animals. This is a super mystery to me. For example, my son was playing Fortnite For over 20 hours a day, he looked crazy and his eyes looked like garbage. And then [he said] ‘I don’t want to go to school. I want to play all day.’ Eventually my husband stopped playing this game. Seems like a super strong attitude. I want to access that mindset.

You can talk about the influences on the ancient works on display, such as his monumental painting, In the land of the dead, stepping on a rainbow’s tailWhat do you see the legend of Chinese mythology immortality in Dao?

The [Daoist immortals and] The Great Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 was what I really wanted to learn, including the mechanics of how religion arises. That’s what I was learning and explaining. And I have always felt that cultures arise in one place, but when they are transferred and relocated to other regions and other cultures, they are always misunderstood and there are misunderstandings and they are constantly changing. So this work is kind of an embodiment of that process because of the original reason. [of the Daoist immortals] And the original paintings are from China, and Soga Shohaku was a Japanese artist who brought them in and turned them into his own work, but at that time there was already a kind of deconstruction in his interpretation. And then I take it back and reinterpret it and change it from the original. So what I’ve done is a complete mess compared to the original, but I think that’s really the essence of culture and cultural transmission.