Shinji Murakami
Flwrs

Murakami’s Flwr began as an omage to one of his idols Andy Warhol. The artist closely took from Warhol’s Flowers, beginning with an attention to the master artist’s colors, and quickly turning to his own experiments onto the works. In these first 24 panels, Murakami replaced three backgrounds with different colors instead of the overall white or green choice. He also shifted his silk screen to create variations and outright errors in the works, offering movement and possibility. No two works are the same and each introduces a new direction which, if desired could be followed.

As Murakami tends to do, he move forward, making a foursome of Flwr where he applied similar concepts but limited himself to gold and silver, experimenting with leaf as a material versus paint. The took the works into sculpture, with their 2D and 3D interpretations, re-writing the rules of silk screening; and finally came out on the other side with a threesome of perfectly flat, minimal paintings in pink, red and yellow. With this last set, he erased the outline of each flower image, rendering it ever more minimal.