The Purity of MADSAKI's Paintings

The Takashi Murakami protegé is the art world's next big thing.

MADSAKI occupies a unique space in between the worlds of Japanese and American art. Born in Osaka in 1974, and relocated to New Jersey when he was young. There, he experienced racism firsthand, even though he didn’t know it at the time as he was learning how to speak English.

He remembers being called “Pearl Harbor” and thinking it was just a nickname k…