September 17 – November 2000

(Long Island City, NY, September 8, 2000) – P.S.1 is proud to unveil Second Mission Project ko² (SMP ko²) in its newly completed entirety. The three-part sculptural installation by Takashi Murakami depicts a life-sized adolescent girl running at full speed, transforming, and taking off as an airplane. All three stages of the "transformation" process are being shown together for the first time as a long-term installation at P.S.1. Second Mission Project ko² is curated by P.S.1 Senior Curator, Klaus Biesenbach.

As a studio artist at P.S.1 in 1994-95, Murakami created and exhibited menacing inflatable giants. These creatures, were derived from Mr. DOB, a cartoon character patented by Murakami and developed into several bodies of work including a line of Mr. DOB products. Murakami’s manipulation and critique of mass-market appeal runs throughout his work including SMP ko², which is also available as a small do-it-yourself model kit.

In addition to being and artist and curator, Murakami is a scholar of contemporary Japanese culture. In 1986 Takashi Murakami became the first person to receive a Doctorate in Nihon-ga from The Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Nihon-ga was a style of painting artificially created and sanctioned by the Japanese government in the Meiji Era (late 19th century). Nihon-ga fuses traditional Japanese styles of the Eudo Era with western painting styles.

Nihon-ga continues to play a strong role in Murakami’s exacting compositions and the precision of his painting technique. There is a simulated freedom in the expressive gestures of Milk and Cream, (both 1998) which appear to be splash paintings, when on closer inspection they are meticulously rendered. These paintings depict an expulsion of body fluids and set a backdrop for two of his earlier life-sized otaku dolls: Lonesome Cowboy and Hiropon. Hiropon (Heroine) is also the name of Murakami’s studio/factory that created the figures in cooperation with master sculptor BOME.

Over-ripe with sexual potency, Murakami’s figures morph licentious otaku anime (Japanimation) dolls into perverse reflections of themselves. In these recent works, Murakami subverts the seductive intent of otaku cartoon imagery to create aggressive super-human adolescents. Second Mission Project ko² is a continuation of Murakami’s critical look at Japanese otaku culture. Although American audiences may not recognize his gesture as scandalous, to inflate and further exaggerate the sexuality of otaku dolls unmasks the perversity of this new Japanese otaku aesthetic. In this way, the triumphant super-girl of Second Mission Project ko² becomes the conqueror and antithesis of the discomfort and humiliation experienced by some members of the otaku society as they react to the work.

The newly completed phase of SMP ko² shows a girl in the midst of becoming an airplane. The explosive take-off happens against a reflective backdrop: one of Murakami’s signature splash paintings depicting an ecstatic burst of body fluid. Speaking of PKO², the prototype for SMPko², Murakami states, "PKO² originally started as a project, by expressing a girl valkyrically transforming into an airplane to somehow define a kind of current Japanese sexual complex, which equals a girl, which equals an airplane..."

Second Mission Project ko² courtesy Blum & Poe, Santa Monica, CA