This exhibition was conceived as an homage to the 60th anniversary of Andy Warhol's Flowers exhibition, first presented at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1964. Initially, I had only heard about the concept from the gallery's owner, Barbara Castelli, but I did not anticipate becoming personally involved in the project as a solo exhibition.

The exhibition is structured around three main pillars. First, the creation of works employing Warhol's signature technique of "reproduction." Second, a display configuration that references the original 1964 installation. Third, the presentation of sculptural works that reflect my own interpretation.

For the "reproduction" method, I referred to black-and-white images from the gallery’s website archive and classified the original 24 works into four grayscale tones. The number of layers—5, 10, 15, or 20—was assigned according to differences in brightness, with the depth of the cut-out areas corresponding to the original grayscale tones. These were then mirrored symmetrically at the center, resulting in 48 duplicated pieces. Through mirrored reflection, the work evokes the infinite repetition of flowers. Each floral outline was intricately cut from Yupo paper, and the mirrored repetition of the flowers transforms into an inverted, hollow presence—an existence akin to a void.

Based on the 1964 installation, I arranged 48 Flowers pieces on the front wall, placed four balloons with positive floral forms by the windows to correspond with large flower paintings, and, through further experimentation, developed the exhibition to include book-cutting works.

In my research for this exhibition, I immersed myself in literature on Pop Art, Warhol’s own book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, contemporary critiques, past catalogs and subcultural magazines I had collected, as well as recent exhibition reviews. In addition, I studied Warhol's works in person and conducted interviews with experts deeply familiar with his art, accumulating insights into his ideas and context.

Another key context of Warhol’s Flowers is its relationship to his Thirteen Most Wanted Men series from the 1964 New York World’s Fair.* In this exhibition, I aimed to materialize the connection between political censorship and artistic expression by creating book-cutting works as a medium.

*Thirteen Most Wanted Men consisted of enlarged silk-screened mugshots taken from a booklet distributed by the NYPD. As expected, the work sparked controversy and was censored before the fair's opening—initially painted over in silver and later covered with black cloth. Warhol used the same square format for Flowers as he did for the individual panels of Thirteen Most Wanted Men. When he sent the first collage version of Flowers to his printer for black-and-white reproduction (the first step in silk-screen production), he scribbled a note in the margin: "Mr. Golden, please make it in black and white lines. Just like my Thirteen Most Wanted Men."

Warhol and the Art Scene of the 1960s

The 1960s was a time of social upheaval, marked by the Vietnam War and student movements, while abstract expressionism dominated the art world. Coming from a design background, Warhol may have harbored a warped rebellious spirit toward the art establishment of the time. That the Flowers motif, originally a reproduction from an advertisement, evolved into abstract forms and was embraced by the legendary Leo Castelli Gallery is highly symbolic.

Although Warhol’s works are often perceived as apolitical, his collages of white flowers following John F. Kennedy’s assassination, portraits of Jacqueline Kennedy, and his Marilyn Monroe series, which began after her death, suggest an underlying social critique. In this exhibition, the piece Gun Shot positions floral cutouts along the trajectory of a bullet, alluding to the coexistence of beauty and violence. Beyond Warhol’s own surface-level aesthetic treatment of this relationship, I sought to reveal the latent political dimensions of his work.

Furthermore, Warhol continued to record unknown subjects through long-form videos and other media, using reproduction and repetition.　Warhol’s known interest in Japanese art suggests he may have been drawn to the concept of mu (nothingness)This was one of the reasons I ended up using negative flower shapes to express flowers in this exhibition.

This exhibition does not simply "reproduce" Warhol’s Flowers but seeks to reinterpret them from a contemporary perspective through my own cutting-based artistic approach. By employing cutting techniques and negative forms, I aim to reveal the political implications underlying the coexistence of surface beauty and violence in Warhol’s work, while presenting an alternative interpretation that reverses the sense of presence.