Virgil Abloh, Takashi Murakami show opens at Gagosian London

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 28, 2018

London’s Gagosian gallery in Davies Street has linked up with Off-White founder Virgil Abloh and fashion favourite Takashi Murakami for an exhibition that runs until early April.

The collaborative show blends fashion references with art and draws on the signature style (and logo) of the Off-White label alongside the long career and best known output of Murakami.

Reports are that the first few days have seen heavy visitor traffic with a much wider audience than is usual for an art show. Visitors so far seem to be drawn as much by their interest in sneaker and streetwear labels such as Off-White and Supreme (and maybe in Louis Vuitton too given Murakami’s earlier work with the label) as anything else.

A gallery spokesperson said it had never previously seen queues around the block for an exhibition opening.

The Future History collaborative show includes the Japanese artist’s cartoonish creations, among other pieces, with he and Abloh having spent over two months collaborating on paintings and sculptures. The approach seems to have been a take-it-as-it-comes one and has resulted in an interesting fashion-art mash. 

Given the fashion element, the opening also came with a limited edition of 400 T-shirts that sold out ultra-fast on the Gagosian website.

Abloh also said that his awareness of art feeds through to his fashion design work and it seemed logical to work on a “serious” art show, adding the suggestion that some of what the pair have created would work just as well in a retail store as in the home of an art buyer. 

The exhibition follows the link-up between Abloh and Murakami at last autumn’s streetwear event ComplexCon where their silk-screen T-shirt station was among the busiest parts of the event.

Next year, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago will stage the first museum retrospective of Abloh’s work.