Take a Look Inside Takashi Murakami's "Arhat Cycle" Exhibition at Milan's Palazzo Reale

Check out these installation views of Murakami's exhibition of new paintings currently showing in Italy.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Late last month, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami opened a solo exhibition in Milan at the Palazzo Reale, an extravagant and historical palace in Genoa. Titled "Arhat Cycle," the exhibition of new works made after the Fukushima disaster is curated by Francesco Bonami and organized by Blum & Poe and Kaikai Kiki. 

In an interview with Stella Succi of Mousse Magazine, Murakami said that he and a team of six people spent two years doing research for the art in the exhibition. "It took so much time for them to understand everything: the art form, the religious history, the general history, how communication is culturally different in Chinese/Korean and Western culture."

He compared the monk paintings to depictions of Pokemon, explaining that he didn't want it to be too serious. "Pokemon are very cute, but every Pokemon came from historical Japanese and Eastern traditional monsters," Murakami said. "They took the historical monster and added a little bit of cuteness: wings, eyeballs, and that kind of stuff, very unnatural. So the monks in the paintings have new stories, they don’t have a history."

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The exhibition shows through Sept. 7, so you still have time to make it to Italy to see the works in person.

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