Gajin Fujita

Painting 

Gajin Fujita’s extensive body of painterly work is characterized by its bold mixture of classical Japanese motifs and painting techniques, the dynamic aesthetics of graffiti and diverse references to Western and East Asian painting history. The artist adroitly plays with the codes of his culture of origin—Japan—and American popular culture, interweaving pictorial elements of Japanese culture that he knows only in a mediated way as an American citizen. It is this experience of dual foreignness that informs the artist’s concise and powerful work. 

 

In Fujita’s complex paintings, symbols of the American West Coast’s ethnic and cultural diversity intersect with the logos of multinational companies and motifs from ukiyo-e woodcut prints of the Edo period. Gajin Fujita also emphasizes the tension between tradition and the present in the gold leaf he applies to the ground of his pictures, which, throughout cultural history, from the Orient to the Occident, has been reserved for the most precious of artworks. However, while in European medieval panel painting, the gold ground iconographically separated the sacred from the profane space, in Fujita’s work, it serves as the surface for graffiti tags and bold lacquered colours. 
 

Sophisticated calligraphic language games are also at home in the artist’s multiverse. Fujita’s works are the expression and result of a contemporary, multi-layered production of culture and images. In their “all-over”, his pictorial spaces reveal the simultaneity of the extremely contradictory cultural signs of our globalized reality. The Californian painter’s consistently popular work is thus in tune with the times without losing sight of history. The Los Angeles Times’ Christopher Knight praised Fujita’s painting as “the most important 21st-century iteration of graffiti’s influence on art”. 
 

The artist, who was born in Los Angeles in 1972 to Japanese parents, came into close contact with Los Angeles graffiti culture as a teenager, and he joined the tagging crews KGB (Kidz Gone Bad) and KIIS (Kill to Succeed). His experiences with graffiti street art led Fujita down his own path to fine art, earning his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and his MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

 
Gajin Fujita’s works are represented in important public collections, including in the United States and Australia: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney; the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena; the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento; the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio; the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita; the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga; and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City.

 

Further insights into the artist's work can be found in the catalogue Gajin Fujita, True Colors, L.A. Louver, 2023.

Selected Works

Gajin Fujita, ‘Angel's Eye View’, 2024, Spray paint, 23.75K gold leaf, 12K white gold leaf and paint markers on five wood panels
Angel's Eye View, 2024
Spray paint, 23.75K gold leaf, 12K white gold leaf and paint markers on five wood panels
Gajin Fujita, ‘Blessings and Curses of this World’, Installation view, Buchmann Galerie, 2024
Blessings and Curses of this World, 2024
Installation view
Gajin Fujita, ‘Angelic Intervention (AI)’, 2023, Spray paint, 24K gold leaf, 12K white gold leaf, acrylic paint and paint markers on four wood panels
Angelic Intervention (AI), 2023
Spray paint, 24K gold leaf, 12K white gold leaf, acrylic paint and paint markers on four wood panels
Gajin Fujita, ‘The Toxic Wash’, 2024, 24K goldleaf, 12K white goldleaf, spray paint and paint markers on wood panels
The Toxic Wash, 2024
24K goldleaf, 12K white goldleaf, spray paint and paint markers on wood panels
Gajin Fujita, ‘Hell is Down’, 2023-2024, Spray paint, 24K gold leaf, 12K white gold leaf and paint markers on two wood panels
Hell is Down, 2023-2024
Spray paint, 24K gold leaf, 12K white gold leaf and paint markers on two wood panels
Gajin Fujita, ‘Crush’, 2016,  spraypaint, paint markers, Mean Streak,12k and 24k gold leaf on wood
Crush, 2016
spraypaint, paint markers, Mean Streak,12k and 24k gold leaf on wood
Gajin Fujita, ‘Blessings and Curses of this World’, Installation view, Buchmann Galerie, 2024
Blessings and Curses of this World, 2024
Installation view
Gajin Fujita, ‘Mere Mortal’, 2022, 12K & 24K gold leaf, spraypaint, acrylic paint and paint markers on six wood panels
Mere Mortal, 2022
12K & 24K gold leaf, spraypaint, acrylic paint and paint markers on six wood panels
Gajin Fujita, ‘Blessings and Curses of this World’, Installation view, Buchmann Galerie, 2024
Blessings and Curses of this World, 2024
Installation view
Buchmann Galerie
Gajin Fujita, ‘Blessings and Curses of this World’, Installation view, Buchmann Galerie, 2024
Blessings and Curses of this World, 2024
Installation view
Gajin Fujita, ‘The Saints’, 2008, Gold leaf, acrylic, spray paint and paint marker on six wood panels
The Saints, 2008
Gold leaf, acrylic, spray paint and paint marker on six wood panels

News

Gallery Exhibitions

Publications

Gajin Fujita

born 1972 in Los Angeles, USA, where he works and lives.

Education

1997 – 2000  MFA, University of Nevada, USA

1993 – 1997  BFA, Otis College of Art and Design, USA

Grants and Awards

2024  Academician of the National Academy of Design, New York, USA

2019  Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, USA

Solo Exhibitions

2024
2023
2022
2019
2015
2014
2012
2011
2008
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999

Group Exhibitions

2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
Selected Collections

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Creative Artists Agency, Beverly Hills, USA

Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, USA

Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, USA

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA

Hunter Museum, Chattanooga, USA

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, USA

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA

Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, USA

The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, Austin, USA

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, USA

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, USA

U.S. Biennial Inc/Prospect New Orleans, New Orleans, USA

Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, USA

Selected Publications
2023 Gajin Fujita: True Colors, L.A. Louver, L.A.
2019 The Autograph Book of L.A.: Improvements on the Page of the City. Los
Angeles: Angel City Press, Los Angeles Public Library
2019 Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art: 25 Years at
Kemper Mjseum. Kansas City: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
2014 Marking 20 Years: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Kansas City:
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
2009 Prebles’ Artforms: An Introduction to Visual Arts. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson Prentice Hall
2008 A Pocketful of Contemporary Artists: Photographic
Portraits. Victoria: Peleus Press, 2008
2007 Impulse: Works on Paper from the Logan Collection. Vail: The Logan Collection,
2007. Print.
2006 Graffiti L.A.: Street Styles and Art. New York: Abrams, 2006. Print.
2005 “Wisk”, and Robert “Relax” Reiling. The History of Los Angeles Graffiti Art.
Volume 1, 1983-1988. Los Angeles: Alva & Reiling