MURAKAMI PLANS ANIMATION STUDIO IN LA; ART INSTITUTE COMPLETES NEW WING
Suzanne Muchnic reports in the Los Angeles Times’ blog that Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is planning to open an animation studio in Los Angeles next summer. Though he already has a studio in New York, Murakami has decided that Hollywood is the place to expand his filmmaking capabilities. The new studio will operate under the umbrella of Kaikai Kiki, his production and artist-management company. “Animation and film have always been among my greatest influences, ever since I first saw Star Wars and Hayao Miyazaki’s films,” Murakami said in a statement. “This studio represents a great step in the evolution of Kaikai Kiki and gives me a closer proximity to the community of artists with whom I hope to collaborate as I continue my explorations of animated and live-action film.” The company has leased a building on North Highland Avenue, to be adapted to the studio’s needs. With 6,220 square feet of space on the first floor and 2,760 square feet on the second level, the facility is expected to accommodate about thirty employees, said Daniel Rappaport of Management 360, Kaikai Kiki’s talent-management firm in Los Angeles. The studio’s first project will be a feature-length animated film based on “Planting the Seeds,” the shorts that premiered at Murakami’s midcareer retrospective at MOCA, Rappaport said. It also created the Kanye West video for “Good Morning.” The shorts also appeared last spring at the Brooklyn Museum’s version of the exhibition and, more recently, at the 2008 CineVegas Film Festival in Las Vegas. The digitally animated works feature Kaikai and Kiki, the company’s cartoon-character namesakes, traveling the world in a spaceship and learning to grow watermelons with the help of fertilizer, or “poop” as they gleefully call it.
In other news, the Art Institute of Chicago is completing construction of the new Renzo Piano–designed modern wing and begins installation process in anticipation of its opening on May 16. The museum has installed the first work in the modern wing, Charles Ray’s Hinoki, 2007, which is one of the largest works ever exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago. The addition of the Nichols Bridgeway, a pedestrian bridge also designed by Piano, will connect the wing to the city’s other major visitor attraction, Millennium Park, and further strengthen the museum’s connection to the city. The building project—the most ambitious in the Art Institute’s 130-year history—will reorganize the entire museum by 2010 and increase total museum gallery space by 35 percent and education space by 100 percent. Artforum.com previously reported on the museum’s expansion here.
