Hino Moto no Keko 1997

Tadanori Yokoo made ‘Hino Moto no Keko’ with what looks like screen printing, and it's one of those images where you can almost feel the artist figuring things out as they go along. The colours pop – a real mix of traditional Japanese motifs with a kind of psychedelic twist. The surface is flat, but the way Yokoo layers all these images, cats tumbling all over one another, kind of gives it depth. There’s this central lucky cat, and around it, these dark, silhouetted cats, some jumping, some just hanging out. It’s like a party, but a serious one about luck, prosperity, and I guess, cat power. It reminds me a bit of Warhol, but with a spiritual angle. It’s about repetition, but also about the feeling that art is this ongoing conversation, where ideas get remixed and reinterpreted. Yokoo isn’t giving us any easy answers; instead, he’s inviting us to get lost in the layers, and find our own meaning.