Tomoo Gokita was featured in our March 2015 issue, where we learned that not only was he a fantastic painter, but also a wrestling fan. Maybe he could have been at Wrestlemania this past weekend? Well anyway Tomoo will be in California soon to open his newest body of work, Besame Mucho, at Los Angeles' Honor Fraser Gallery. The exhibition will be opening April 11, 2015 and running through May 16, 2015.
On view will be new paintings by Tokyo-based Tomoo Gokita, who is acclaimed for his black and white gouache works that incorporate exceptional draftsmanship with disarming, surreal imagery. Gokita continues his monochromatic series that explores the traditional portrait format, blending the figural with abstraction. Along with the more intimate portraits of individuals, this exhibition marks the first time that large-scale group compositions will also be featured. Using source material from vintage postcards, 1970's magazines, found photos, and classic film stills, Gokita distorts his subjects' bodies and obfuscates the faces, blurring them in gradations of gray and rendering them unrecognizable and yet still uncannily familiar.
Read our full interview with Tomoo here.
Tomoo Gokita (b. 1969) lives and works in Tokyo. Honor Fraser Gallery has presented two exhibitions featuring Gokita's work to date: Heaven (2009) and Vanity Drunko (2007). In 2014 Gokita was the subject of the large-scale solo exhibition, Tomoo Gokita: The Great Circus at the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in Sakura, Japan. His work has also been included in such thematic shows as Wonderful My Art, Kawaguchiko Museum of Art, Yamanashi, Japan (2013); The Unseen Relationship: Form and Abstraction, Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Sakura (2012); Gateway: Japan, Torrance Art Museum, CA (2011); VOCA 2009: The Vision of Contemporary Art, Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo (2009); New York Minute, Macro Future Museum, Rome (2009); Collected Visions, Pera Museum, Istanbul (2009).