Aya Takano : Reintegrating Worlds

Better late than never I suppose... but if you want to check out this new Aya Takano exhibit in New York you better hurry- it ends December 12th!

One of my favorite artists in the KaiKai Kiki artist collective is Aya Takano. Her now show, Reintegrating Worlds, at Skarstedt Gallery, looks absolutely stellar.

Excerpt from the press release:
Skarstedt Gallery is pleased to announce Reintegrating Worlds, the first New York solo exhibition by Japanese artist Aya Takano. The show is comprised of fifteen new paintings, all created this year for the exhibition.

In her latest body of work, Takano continues to develop her own unique visual style by combining traditional Japanese imagery with those derived from science fiction, as well as impressions of modern Japan. More specifically, many of the works in Reintegrating Worlds are inspired by the cultures of the Amami Oshima Islands off the coast of Southern Japan and the ancient Ainu people. Derived from the traditions of these early hunter-gathering societies, Takano’s paintings depict images of figures, animals and sea creatures interacting together in a highly imaginative landscape. Her signature long-limbed young girls are still evident levitating in space and participating in ritualistic activities that are both erotic and utopian.

Says Takano, “Lately, I’ve come to live in closer proximity to animals and the feeling hit me suddenly that humans and animals used to be much closer – we depended on them for food, shelter, and transport, or at the very least shared those things with them. There used to be more of them around us.”

Takano incorporates indigenous motifs informed by photographs from Sakyo Komatsu’s field guide of the world’s ethnicities. Adorned with tribal masks, headdresses, and tattoos, the figures display vestiges of primal customs and rituals as they are swimming, playing, and working in nature. As in her earlier works, Takano’s new paintings express particular moods in a cartoon-like manner as the figures lack anatomical details, as well as due to the painting’s continually shifting perspective. Each scene is overflowing with symbolic details and folkloristic aspects derived from a range of sources, which Takano has integrated seamlessly together, continuously evolving her own unique pictorial language.

Aya Takano Documentary

I'm a huge fan of the KaiKai Kiki artist Aya Takano, and I was really excited to find these documentaries on YouTube. Her work is just gorgeous.

Royal-T Cafe

I'm sorry posting has been a little behind this week. I got chosen for jury duty for the next three weeks, so I have been at court all day and then working at night. It's been a long week! (2 more to go!)

I realized I mentioned that I went to the Royal-T cosplay cafe, but I never posted any photos! We went a few months back, and the art collection there was just amazing. I took a few photos but you really should pay the cafe a visit if you are in Los Angeles!



The cafe features pieces by artists like Yoshitomo Nara, Aya Takano, Chiho Aoshima, and Takashi Murakamai, among others.

KaiKai Kiki Marketplace

If I could win a shopping spree at any store in the whole world, it would be at the KaiKai Kiki Marketplace!

They have the most amazing selection of items from all the KaiKai Kiki artists, including Takashi Murakami, Chiho Aoshima, Aya Takano, Mr., Chinatsu Ban, and others! I want everything! The print selection is the most amazing- with really great prices. Of course, now that I am so excited about buying up everything on the site, I find that they will only ship to Japan. I am going to have to devise a plan to find a friend in Japan that I can have everything shipped to.

Aya Takano 'Wild dogs, hawks, owls, cats, a landfill the size of 44 and a half Tokyo Domes, the stratosphere'

Feb. 10, 2007 – April 7, 2007
Gallery Emmanuel Perrotin Miami
Aya Takano's solo show in Miami is based upon the artitst's trip to a trash disposal plant.
From the KaiKai Kikii site:
The story: One day Aya Takano noticed a strange windmill outside her studio in the Tokyo Bay Area. She found there a waste disposal plant built on a landfill. From this spectacular sight came tales of girls and animals born and raised in a world buried in trash. The story of these mysterious lanky girls and their symbiotic co-existence with these new bird- and dog-like life forms touched the hearts of the denizens of Miami, a city perpetually sinking from global warming.

Aya Takano: There is a Science Fiction author, James Tiptree, Jr. whom I like. In one of her unfinished long works, I remember a scene where children born without hands or feet (the result of radiation from a nuclear bomb or something) cooperate with each other to drive a large car in their departure to somewhere. Also, there is a really wonderful Japanese comic book called Nausicaa, where the atmosphere has become poisonous--deadly to a person of this world--as the result of a large war. Both of these stories portray poisonous environments, but ones in which life continues.

When I shared my experiences at the waste site with people around me, I was told me that in some landfills, plants grow that have adapted to poison. It reminded me of how insects adapt to withstand pesticide. I heard that billions of years ago, most creatures on Earth were extremely sensitive to oxygen. As oxygen increased on the planet, many of them died off. One atmosphere might be unsurvivable for one creature, yet optimum for another. I also hear that there is life on the inside of deepsea volcanoes, the inside of clay, and other places where we previously thought it could not exist. I thought that the children who might be born sometime on this waste site, who might seem like mutants to us, are Venuses of this new world. I consider them beautiful.

To get rid of trash, no matter what we do, as long as we live on this planet, and as long as the systems we have continue to be effective, will not be possible. In the Edo Period (over 100 years in the past), in Japan there was a perfect waste ecosystem, including human excretions, but there is no way to go back to that now. Vinyl and plastic do not decompose, even after hundreds of years. If children are born amongst the mountains of plastic and vinyl left by us and the generations before us, they might look at these mountains and find them beautiful. Well, at least, I think they are beautiful. It is the same as how I think that artificial buildings and lights are beautiful.

The Door Into Summer : The Age of Micropop

Feb. 3 through May 6 2007 at Art Tower Mito (ATM) in Ibaraki, Japan

From the Art Tower Mito site:
The upcoming group exhibition at Art Tower Mito (ATM) presents the works of artists who have played a central role in Matsui's development of the concept of "Micropop." It also features the works of those young artists whose works suggest that they will be responsible for the further development of the genre, when the future is viewed from Micropop's perspective.

ATM's exhibition has gathered together more than 250 works, old and new, by 15 Japanese artists on the Micropop scene: tableaux and drawings by Nara Yoshitomo, Sugito Hiroshi, Ochiai Tam, Arima Kaoru, Aoki Ryoko, Aya Takano, Mori Chihiro, Mahomi Kunikata; photographs by SHIMABUKU and Noguchi Rika; installations by Handa Masanori and K.K.; and video works by Tanaka Koki, Oki Hiroyuki, and Izumi Taro. The exhibition highlights their artistic creativity, with each artist producing a unique style of creative work while sharing something in common with the others. It also attempts to demonstrate the points of similarity between their artistic expressions and the lifestyles and sensibilities of young people in general, also considering their possible influence on future generations.

Better late than never: Aya Takano for Issey Miyake

It sucks when you find out about something totally-incredibly-amazing way too late. It's just how I felt this week when I discovered that LAST YEAR Issey Miyake hired Aya Takano to design a line of rain wear. Of course, it's the cutest clothing in the whole world. The boots are amazing... and how great does that runway model look? Completely decked out in head-to-toe Takano- the best way to travel in the rain!