MADSAKI

Homecoming King

- Evan Pricco

Subversive is a descriptive often overused in the art world, routinely referencing a brand of humor or political message, sometimes both, resulting in my hesitancy to use the term even when it’s most apt. In MADSAKI’s work, though, I can’t help but feel the fascinating, overwhelming, pulse of subversion. What we see as messy, sloppy, and often caustic, is a beautiful and telling story of belonging and nostalgia told in a brutally honest conversation of what it means to be an outsider.

When the Osaka-born, Jersey-raised and Tokyo-based MADSAKI first garnered attention for his art, it was through his Wannabie’s series, a collection of graffiti-like interpretations of the classics we commonly perceive as important works of centuries past. What made that series subversive is how it begged the question, “why?”

Why are these things important? Why do cultures identify particular images as distinctly representational? Who decides? And what made the work so compellingly personal is that MADSAKI was in the process of figuring it all out for himself too.

It’s funny, though, that my clearest understanding of MADSAKI’s career came in the form of HeMan. When the artist began to dig deeper into the American pop-culture psyche, thrusting his own experiences of growing up in a culture that often presents barriers of entry, there was a breakthrough—and subversive—introspection of how we treat those around us. What does it feel like to be included? Or in this case, not included.