Located across the street from his family home, a single-room storehouse has been Gokita's workplace for the past seven years. "I found it by complete chance," he says. "I'd walked by so many times but never really paid much attention to it. One day I looked inside, spoke to the owner, and I've rented it ever since."

The interior is the typical painter's enclave: large canvases leaning against the wall, cans of gesso stashed in corners, paint-splattered shoes on the floor. Gokita's desk is a sea of clutter, overflowing with tubes of paint and glue, dozens of pens, tins full of brushes, cigarette lighters, an ashtray and stacks of magazines. The counterbalance of abstract vigor, precise lines and quirky appropriated imagery that char...