Fresh out of the gates for Basel Week Miami is a showing from Tomoo Gokita with acrylic and gouache on canvas paintings at Bill Brady Gallery’s new permanent space in the Little River District. The new body of work, titled Damage Control, took portraiture painting to another level with works based on vintage portraits of Hollywood divas, movie stills, found photos and postcards. Created with soft gradients, solid black, or even unpainted white space, the Japanese artist’s characters are mostly faceless, giving only subtle suggestions of their basic features. While mysterious and almost haunting at first, there is a certain dose of dark humor present in his works. From minimalist depictions of eyes often created with fingertips, to exaggerated, cartoon-like limbs, Gokita both ridicules and glorifies these unknown subjects. Although using only monochrome tones and showing very few details in his work, the Tokyo-based artist achieves a great sense of depth and form by combining different techniques of manipulating brush strokes and paint. The captivating effect of these unusual yet very recognizable portraits is completed with dark, but very fine gradient backgrounds.
Photo credit by @sashabogojev.
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