Gary Baseman: The Door Is Always Open makes its Asian debut this summer at MOCA Taipei, following a successful exhibition at The Skirball Center in Los Angeles this past April. Featuring over 500 works created by Baseman over three decades, the retrospective is the most comprehensive look into Baseman's career to date.
Spanning the world of publishing to television and film, to fine art, theatre and dance, music and fashion, photography, and toy design, Baseman is a poignant storyteller and artist. His work uses aesthetically raw and childlike imagery that often addresses challenging and complex subject matter - referencing history, the human psyche, and what Baseman calls "the beauty of the bittersweetness of life."
For this exhibition, MOCA's historic Taipei building is re-imagined into a unique experiential home environment in which guests are invited to sit on a sofa or at the dining room table and explore, participate, and visit. Each room, thematic in nature, evokes in visitors the desire to reflect and share their own stories about family, friends, mortality, pain and suffering, love and loss, secrets and truth
Featured spaces include the Living Room (Welcome—Introduction), the Dining Room (Celebration), Hallway (Journey), the Bedroom (the Human Condition), the Study (Heritage), the Den (Play), the Studio Office (Work), the Backyard (Performance), the Park (Escape), and the Alley (Dreams). For Gary Baseman, art and life is always mixed together, so in the Living Room, Dining Room and Bedroom, he especially includes furniture from his childhood home.
Showing the breadth of Baseman’s oeuvre, the exhibition includes illustration works (published in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and The Los Angeles Times); Baseman’s complete line of designer toys including Dumb Luck, Hotchachacha, and Toby; costumes and fashion collaborations; video and sculptural installations; and new paintings inspired by his recent trips across Asia.
Throughout his career and through multiple media, Baseman has explored the human condition, showing through his iconic characters and images the complexity of life. The Door is Always Open will evoke visitors to reflect and share their own stories about family, friends, mortality, pain and suffering, love and loss, secrets and truth.