Takeshi Murata – Midnight
November 8 – December 14
2831A Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94110 USA
Opening Reception: Friday, November 8, 6 – 8pm
Press Preview: Friday, November 8, 5 – 6pm
Ratio 3 is pleased to announce Midnight, an exhibition of new work by Takeshi Murata. For his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, Murata will debut a cinematic projection of his latest animated video, OM Rider, accompanied by a hologram from the same narrative project.
Midnight combines Murata's recent figurative animation with his ongoing exploration of new media. The hologram allows viewers to explore Murata’s animation as an immersive and reactive image, while the video depicts two characters navigating a shadowy computer-animated world. Designed, animated, and scripted by the artist, OM Rider balances high production value with handcrafted treatment of its two characters– a reckless wolf and an embittered old man– who are uncannily familiar, yet unique to the artist’s surreal aesthetic and dark humor.
Their relationship left ambiguous, the characters invite multiple interpretations; they may be longstanding adversaries, allegories, or sides of a single personality. With no defined beginning or end, OM Rider shows its characters in repetitive action: casting dice, ruminating, wandering the landscape, riding a moped, and ascending an endless staircase. Accompanied by an atmospheric soundscape designed by Robert Beatty, the two characters mirror and contrast each other, suggesting a timeless, repeating narrative.
Murata was born in 1974 in Chicago, IL. In 1997, he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied Film, Video, and Animation. He currently lives and works in Saugerties, New York. Murata has exhibited at the New Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Sikemma Jenkins & Co., New York; Gladstone Gallery, New York; and Salon 94, New York. Murata’s work is featured in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens; and The Smithsonian Museum of American Art.
OM Rider’s audio was mastered by Kramer at Noise Miami. Spencer Yeh provided the wolf’s voice, and the wolf’s beat was composed by Devin Flynn.