IN CHA!; 1999 - 2000

Takashi Murakami made this piece, IN CHA!;, and I’m immediately drawn to the way he lays down these super flat, almost cartoon-like colors and shapes. It’s a process of simplification, right? The surfaces are so smooth; you can hardly detect the hand of the artist. It’s like he’s hiding the process, making it all seem effortless and, dare I say, a little… manufactured? But that’s part of the charm, this tension between the handmade and the mass-produced. Look at the little mushroom figures; each one is slightly different, but there’s a uniformity there too. It’s in that contrast where things get interesting, where the piece starts to hum with life. Murakami reminds me a bit of Jeff Koons in his interest in pop culture and his embrace of ambiguity. Both artists play with our expectations, challenging us to reconsider what we value in art and in the world.