ART CITIES:Paris-Aya Takano
Born in Saitama, Japan, Aya Takano spent most of her childhood reading science fiction books and magazines in her father’s library. Fascinated by the exotic animals and landforms, Takano turned them into the themes of her futuristic artworks. In 2000, soon after Takano graduated from Tama Art University in Tokyo, she became an assistant for Takashi Murakami, the leading figure in the Superflat movement.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Perrotin Archive
Aya Takano, in “The Jelly Civilization Chronicle”, her solo exhibition at Galerie Perrotin in Paris, presents 26 paintings and several drawings on celluloid, all preparatory studies for a 186-page manga, unveiled in its entirety. Aya Takano’s work explores complex themes of sexuality, the infantalisation of women in Japanese culture and, more recently, the power of nature, a direct reaction to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. With inspirations varying from 14th Century Italian religious painting to alien evidence to MTV, Takano’s worlds are shiny and futuristic, yet soft and full of traditional and sensual imagery. After taking form in her imagination, the 186-page manga entitled “The Jelly Civilization Chronicle” came to life in very colorful preparatory paintings and drawings on celluloid. In the Manga we find all the themes and obsessions of the artist from the beginning of her career: self-discovery, feminine beauty, science fiction, the fight between light and shadow and the pursuit of an immaterial ideal, freed from all restraints of gravity. The paintings that accompany the manga make up a series of independent, intense and jubilatory works. In them, Aya Takano expresses the essence of her tale with her precise sense of composition. The manga stages the adventures of Naki and Minaka in a journey from the “Machine Civilization” to the “Jelly Civilization”. In a back-and-forth voyage between eras and spaces, the two characters meet in the sky and travel to the outer edges of the universe via unexplored places or planets with unknown magical powers… Initially dressed in emblematic high school uniforms, they are in turns nude or swathed in traditional kimonos or dreamlike clothing made of a mysterious jelly, a living organism that feeds off of water and oxygen. On the ruins of a nuclear reactor, after numerous trials and metamorphoses, the heros return to the peaceful society they originally came from.
Info: Galerie Perrotin, 76 rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 16/3-13/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.perrotin.com