Madsaki

Madsaki, who works under the stylized name MADSAKI (also commonly written Madsaki), was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1974. His family moved to New Jersey in 1980, and he lived in the United States from age six to thirty. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Fine Arts department of Parsons School of Design in New York, graduating in 1996. He returned to Japan in 2004.

His paintings are built around a recurring set of concerns: provocative and satirical phrases, series that reinterpret historical masterworks through loose, dripping spray-paint technique, and more intimate, semi-autobiographical paintings drawn from family life. Across these bodies of work, he has described his own identity as shaped by the gap between an American upbringing and a Japanese heritage. His profile in Japan rose sharply after a 2016 solo exhibition at Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Tokyo, the production and gallery platform associated with Takashi Murakami. He has since held solo exhibitions with Galerie Perrotin in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and New York, alongside continued shows at Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Tokyo. He lives and works in Japan and continues to exhibit as of 2026.

Madsaki has been the subject of feature coverage in outlets such as Juxtapoz, which profiled him under the title "Homecoming King," framing him as an artist who is Osaka-born, Jersey-raised, and Tokyo-based, and whose spray-paint reinterpretations of canonical Western paintings and satirical text works channel that in-between identity. His exhibition record with Kaikai Kiki Gallery and Galerie Perrotin spans Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, though comprehensive public museum collection holdings for the artist are not documented in available sources. No major art prize, biennial award, or comparable institutional honor could be confirmed for Madsaki as of this writing.

Madsaki's auction market is small and recent. Reported results place his highest realized auction price in the region of USD 610,000, per MutualArt's market summary, though available sources could not independently confirm the specific work, auction house, or exact sale date behind that figure. His market activity runs primarily through the primary market, via Galerie Perrotin and Kaikai Kiki Gallery, with secondary-market sales appearing occasionally at Hong Kong and Asia-focused auctions.

Madsaki's public auction history is short, and the highest reported price could not be tied to a specific confirmed work, house, or date in available sources, so any single price point should be read with caution rather than as evidence of a stable trend. There is no catalogue raisonne, and no formal certificate-of-authenticity program has been publicly described, so provenance and gallery documentation through Perrotin or Kaikai Kiki Gallery matter more than usual. Collectors should also note that permanent museum holdings of his work are not clearly documented, distinct from his more extensive record of gallery exhibitions.