Aya Takano  — To Lose Is To Gain — Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 23 → July 28, 2012

Painter, artist, creator of Mangas and author of science-fiction novels, Takano belongs to the Kaikai Kiki artistic production studio created by Takashi Murakami in 2001. We find surprising and sundry references in her paintings : Italian Renaissance, animes, art from the world of Ukiyo-e (Hokusai for example), particularly that of Shunga and the erotic prints in her work.

Slender child-women, often naked, inhabit her half fantastic, half real universe and more rarely, feminised masculine characters. These mutant-like figures with oversized eyes and elongated legs dally in amorous scenes and improbable encounters with mythical animals in lunar landscapes and urban settings. Her colours are always delicate and shaded, the surface and chromatic richness of her paintings at times recalling fresco techniques.

When I first began work on this collection of images, only a few months separated me from the events of 3.11. Overwhelmed by the breadth of the shock, I was virtually unable to think or paint, but I tried, in the midst of that confusion, to focus on the path down which Japan had come and the future to which it was moving. It is this which I have painted and the images are special ones that could only have come from such a chaotic time.

Aya Takano

The small diamond shaped paintings literally float in the same space as the monumental canvasses. The works are gathered around three themes: past, present and future. Paintings such as Past: at the soshimai In shin-yoshiwara, 2011, which represents intimate scenes tied to the traditional image of Japan, as well as episodes of violence resulting from the recent history of the country, belong to the first group of works. On the contrary, in paintings like Present, 2011, we see frightening scenes that are bizarrely connected to dreamlike visions. Finally, as is often the case in her works, Takano imagines an upside down world where cities and their inhabitants are not subject to the laws of gravity and roam freely in futuristic galaxies, Future: with their foundations in outer-space, metropolises float in mid-air, 2011 and Future: cities shaped like internal organs and cubic vehicles, 2011.