Mr.’s work is closely linked to the Japanese movement “Superflat,” coined by artist Takashi Murakami in 2000. Superflat refers to a tendency toward two-dimensionality in Japanese visual art, animation, graphic design, and fashion that can be traced back to traditional painting of the 17th through 19th centuries known as nihonga. Contemporaneously, the style is linked with Japanese animation, anime, and comic books, manga, which proliferated after World War II. Over the span of nearly twenty years, Mr.’s oeuvre has elevated anime and manga subculture by highlighting its cultural significance rather than simply critiquing its frivolity.

For this exhibition, Mr. presents a new body of work with a renewed focus on the spritely characters that have long inhabited his visual world. These recent representations appear as floating heads, both across the gallery walls as shaped-canvas works,  and in dream-like depictions, surrounded by everyday objects that defy gravity. A…