Signed; Mark Kostabi - Art Wave From New York - 1992

[PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS]

Author / Artist: Mark Kostabi
Title: マーク・コスタビ展 ブラウン管の国のアダム — Art Wave From New York
Publisher / Venue: Mitsukoshi Art Museum, Shinjuku (三越美術館・新宿)
Year Published: 1992 (Heisei 4) — First Edition, Exhibition Catalog
Exhibition Dates: April 29 – May 24, 1992
Language: Bilingual — Japanese & English (all artwork titles given in English)
Format: Softcover, 28 × 21 cm, unpaginated, all full-color illustrations (with black-and-white studio photography)
Inclusions: Authentic Mark Kostabi signature with personal dedication “For Satoshi” (5.2.1992) + original exhibition admission ticket stub

[OVERVIEW]

In the spring of 1992, Mitsukoshi Art Museum in Shinjuku — the white-cube outpost of Japan’s most storied department store — presented Mark Kostabi’s first major Tokyo exhibition: Adam in the Land of Cathode Rays. Kostabi had arrived from New York trailing a reputation that was, even by the standards of the 1980s art world, deliberately provocative: a painter who openly ran his studio as a factory, paid workers to produce canvases, and named the resulting works himself. Andy Warhol, transposed to the Reagan era and stripped of irony’s last pretense.

This catalog is the document of that encounter between Kostabi’s production-line Neo-Pop and the Japanese cultural appetite for American spectacle. Full-color reproductions of his signature headless, faceless figures — laboring at machines, painting at easels, dissolving into consumer electronics — are presented alongside black-and-white studio photographs that reveal the factory floor behind the myth. Works include Graveyard Shift (1988), Automatic Painting (1991), and the self-referential Kostab-O-Matic 5000.

[IMPORTANT NOTE FOR INTERNATIONAL BUYERS: EASY AI TRANSLATION]

This catalog is bilingual in Japanese and English — all artwork titles are given in English, making every work immediately identifiable. Any remaining Japanese text is easily translated using Google Lens, ChatGPT, or Google Translate on any smartphone.

[WHY THIS VOLUME IS A PRIZED COLLECTOR'S ITEM]

Signed & Dedicated “For Satoshi” — with Documented Date and Original Ticket Stub — The catalog is inscribed on the title page: “For Satoshi / Mark Kostabi / 5.2.1992.” A named, dated dedication places this copy in the room, in May 1992, in Shinjuku. Tucked inside is the original exhibition admission ticket stub from Mitsukoshi Art Museum — a piece of ephemera that has survived intact for over three decades and anchors the provenance of this copy to the event itself. Signed catalogs with original ticketing are extraordinarily rare in the secondary market.

Kostabi at the Apex of His Notoriety — 1992 was the year Kostabi’s factory model, his philosophical provocations, and his transatlantic celebrity had reached their peak. This exhibition brought that full apparatus to Tokyo at precisely the right cultural moment. The catalog captures it.
The Full-Color Factory — 90 Works, Unpaginated — The catalog reproduces the exhibition in its entirety: full-bleed color plates of Kostabi’s oil paintings alongside documentary black-and-white photography of his New York studio and production process. An unpaginated format gives the work room to breathe — and keeps the collector guessing.

[CONDITION]

Very Good+ Honest Vintage Survival

Covers Spine: Softcover shows light shelf wear along the edges consistent with 34 years of age, with minor, non-damaging creasing at one corner.
The dramatic black-and-pink cover design retains full visual impact. Spine intact.
Binding: Tight, secure, and fully intact. No splitting or loosening.
Interior & Pages: Interior is clean and Near Fine throughout — no foxing, no annotations, no tears. All pages complete and intact. The Kostabi dedication and original ticket stub are present as found.
*Please carefully inspect all high-resolution listing photos to verify condition.