KEY HIRAGA AT FRIEZE MASTERS

If you weren't paying attention at Frieze this year, you missed something explosive.

Loevenbruck Gallery presented a rediscovery of Key Hiraga's works from the '60s and '70s—and they stopped us in our tracks. Hiraga's paintings are a riotous collision: traditional Japanese techniques meet erotic provocation, psychedelic weirdness meets razor-sharp social critique. Born in Tokyo in 1936, the self-taught artist spent twelve formative years (1965-1977) living in Paris's Pigalle district—the city's infamous red-light neighborhood—where sex shops and nightlife became his laboratory. There, he painted what he called a "monstrous and grotesque human comedy," interrogating eroticism, gender, and the animal nature of humanity against the suffocating moralism of modern society. This is art that refuses to behave. And we can't stop thinking about it.