PARIS.- Perrotin Paris presenting Aya Takano’s personal exhibition, “The Jelly Civilization Chronicle”, from 16 March to 13 May 2017. The artist exhibits a selection of 23 paintings and several drawings on celluloid, all preparatory studies for a 186-page manga, unveiled here in its entirety.
A painter, illustrator, sci-fi writer and manga artist, Aya Takano belongs to Kaikai Kiki, the artistic production studio created in 2001 by Takashi Murakami. Inspired by all art forms, from erotic stamps of the Edo Period to impressionism, from Osamu Tezuka to Gustav Klimt, the artist has built a universe all her own. A universe made of infinite worlds, all means of escaping reality, gravity and its restraints, to attain a certain form of transcendence imagined from the youngest age:
“When I was a kid, I daydreamed and stayed in my fantasy land by reading books and mangas all the time. I hated most designs of devices and buildings and I still do. I aspired to freedom of spirit and I was very different from others. I still want to be like that, but I’m not able to…”
Aya Takano’s inner journeys wind their way into delicate works that convey a disturbing impression, somewhere between eroticism and impertinence. In a bedroom or in the metro, in front of the skyscrapers of a megalopolis or on the moon, naïve and androgynous girls are sketched out in thin, sharp lines. They have wide-open eyes encircled with black, long legs and lips like rosebuds. Often nude, draped in kimonos or dressed in the latest Tokyo fashions, these young women talk to each other, kiss each other, touch each other. Their knees or elbows are reddened, attesting to their extreme sensitivity. They float, fly above the clouds and communicate with their peers or with exotic animals, sometimes misshaped, always in partnership.
Aya Takano’s mythology has constructed itself little by little, through her creations and visions of the unknown. In March 2011, a violent tsunami struck the northeastern coasts of Japan and led to the nuclear accident of Fukushima. A real wake-up call for the artist, this catastrophe deeply influenced her work. Preferring oil paint, which is more natural, to acrylic paint, for example, Aya Takano seems to pursue a new artistic quest, both humble and spiritual, influenced by a unique interest in science and guided by an absolute respect for nature and human life.
