Tomoo Gokita

(Japanese, born 1969)

Tomoo Gokita is a contemporary Japanese artist best known for his monochrome abstract figurative paintings and prints. His signature gray scale compositions are often based on found photographs and old magazine illustrations featuring a central figure whose face is obliterated. Gokita’s stylistic references to Surrealism and abstraction are not deliberate, “I just improvise and, in the end, it looks like these categories, but I never intend it to,” said the artist. He was most influenced by the generation of New York Neo-Expressionists, such as Julian Schnabel, Eric Fischl, and David Salle. Born in 1969 in Tokyo, Japan, he briefly enrolled in a local art college in 1988 where he experimented with oil painting. After two years, he dropped out and became a graphic designer, creating flyers for nightclubs in Japan followed by designing CD and LP covers for rising musicians. Despite his success in the music industry, the artist returned to drawing and painting in the mid-1990s. His works have been shown in influential institutions around the world, including Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in Sakura, Japan, Mary Boone Gallery, Blum & Poe in New York, among others. The artist works and lives in Tokyo, Japan.