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Lot Essay
One of the leading members of Takashi Murakami's Kaikai kiki stable of artists, Aya Takano is identified with the Japanese art style "Tokyo Pop" or "Superflat." This new pop aesthetic borrows from the Japanese subculture of otaku-a computer-geek culture characterized by an obsession with manga (comic books) and anime (cartoons) and the historic traditions of Japanese graphic art.
Takano probes the association between art and psychology in the world through animation. The depicted figures In The Chamber of Spring Pines (Lot 143) and Rongo Rongo, Arises from Oblivion (Lot 142) all pay tribute to the imaginative mind of the artist and the audience. Takano paints her women or rather kawaii girls of the Japanese youth as large eyed with luscious black hair where they become the extension of our imagination and verbal expression. Both pieces with its play of space and illusion, she moves tirelessly in and out of these dreamlike worlds of the mystical, magical mystery of our past and present and in our psyche of our physical world.
The Chamber of Spring Pines depicts an inside-outside view from an interior that extend out into nature. A play of space and illusion, our gaze echoes in all directions from the girl to the painted trees on the screen to the actual tree in the forefront. The reclined main figure reminds us of Edouard Manet's Olympia with a servant by her side and though the painted figure in the front is half nude, she is not overly sexual.
In Rongo Rongo, Arises from Oblivion depicts a scene which is an amalgamation of the many things we can imagine seeing at one time playing at the beach; fireworks under the sunlight, beach by the city, a ghost-like figure in the background, a seagull, kite and pink trees. Takano has once again imagined a world of wonder, amusement and contradictions that entice the viewer's imagination.
Whimsical both in color and in subject matter, Aya Takano is embraced in Japan for her charming and sweet works. Her rich, complex visual language is a successful union of her sheer imaginative genius matched with her mastery and skill in painting. Aya Takano is internationally recognized as one of the most important contemporary artist in Japan by the sheer breadth and depth in her pictorial world and the capacity of her imaginations that is unmistakably revelatory of the perceived complexities of our everyday life.
Takano probes the association between art and psychology in the world through animation. The depicted figures In The Chamber of Spring Pines (Lot 143) and Rongo Rongo, Arises from Oblivion (Lot 142) all pay tribute to the imaginative mind of the artist and the audience. Takano paints her women or rather kawaii girls of the Japanese youth as large eyed with luscious black hair where they become the extension of our imagination and verbal expression. Both pieces with its play of space and illusion, she moves tirelessly in and out of these dreamlike worlds of the mystical, magical mystery of our past and present and in our psyche of our physical world.
The Chamber of Spring Pines depicts an inside-outside view from an interior that extend out into nature. A play of space and illusion, our gaze echoes in all directions from the girl to the painted trees on the screen to the actual tree in the forefront. The reclined main figure reminds us of Edouard Manet's Olympia with a servant by her side and though the painted figure in the front is half nude, she is not overly sexual.
In Rongo Rongo, Arises from Oblivion depicts a scene which is an amalgamation of the many things we can imagine seeing at one time playing at the beach; fireworks under the sunlight, beach by the city, a ghost-like figure in the background, a seagull, kite and pink trees. Takano has once again imagined a world of wonder, amusement and contradictions that entice the viewer's imagination.
Whimsical both in color and in subject matter, Aya Takano is embraced in Japan for her charming and sweet works. Her rich, complex visual language is a successful union of her sheer imaginative genius matched with her mastery and skill in painting. Aya Takano is internationally recognized as one of the most important contemporary artist in Japan by the sheer breadth and depth in her pictorial world and the capacity of her imaginations that is unmistakably revelatory of the perceived complexities of our everyday life.