On February 23rd we’ll be launching the book Takeshi Murata at Nitehawk Cinema with a screening of Return of the Living Dead and a few of Takeshi’s shorts, too. Takeshi will be there to sign books and accept your lavish praise.
Nitehawk Cinema
February 23rd, 7:30 pm
136 Metropolitan Avenue between Berry Street and Wythe Avenue.
The event:
Nitehawk’s ART SEEN presents a 35mm screening of RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD selected and introduced by artist Takeshi Murata in celebration of his new book edited by Dan Nadel.
Screening beforehand are shorts films by Murata: Night Moves, 2012 (6 minutes) and the premiere of his new horror shorts. Afterwards is a book release celebration for the new publication, Takeshi Murata, edited by Dan Nadel in Lo-Res. Copies will be for sale for $40!
The dead are back…Return of the Living Dead features a group of scientists who accidentally release poisonous gas that reanimates the dead, eventually turning most everyone into zombies who crave BRAINS! Out the same year as Romero’s Day of the Dead, Dan O’Bannon’s dark horror comedy helped in inventing the modern vision of zombie life. Although Return may be remembered as kitsch, it’s a whole lot smarter (and fun) than that.
About the book: Takeshi Murata (born 1975) first became known as an early innovator of “datamoshing,” a form of “glitch art” that requires compressing two videos together until their respective pixels merge into one mashed-up picture. Since then, inspired by Giorgio de Chirico and traditional 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting, Murata’s work has ventured into the realm of hyper-realism in a series of uncanny prints and videos that explore our inner and exterior lives via everything from B-grade horror film imagery to relics of a 1980s childhood. Part monograph and part artist’s book,Takeshi Murata includes an essay by New Museum curator Lauren Cornell, an interview with the artist conducted by Alex Gartenfeld, Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and an essay by Dan Nadel.