TAKANO – PERROTIN

Galleries — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 08:38:18 +0000

The Jelly Civilization Chronicle

The Galerie Perrotin is pleased to present Aya Takano’s personal exhibition,

“The Jelly Civilization Chronicle”, from 16 March to 13 May 2017.

The artist will exhibit a selection of 26 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.

2017: The Jelly Civilization Chronicle

Aya Takano has a special gift for storytelling, which she expands and

enriches from one image to the next. She has created a 186-page

manga entitled The Jelly Civilization Chronicle, exhibited in its entirety

at the Galerie Perrotin, in English. After taking form in her imagination,

the work came to life in very colourful preparatory paintings and

drawings on celluloid. We find all the themes and obsessions of the

artist from the beginning of her career, 20 years ago: 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 20 or so 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. Multiplying details and clues, she develops her entire

nuanced and delicate chromatic palette.

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. Surrounded by fabulous

creatures, they are also accompanied by their ancestors, represented

in the form of animals. They learn about the stars, meet a queen in an

owl mask and encounter beings with star-tattoœd skin.

On the ruins of a nuclear reactor, after numerous trials and metamorphoses,

the herœs return to the peaceful society they originally came from. This

“Jelly Civilization” combines tradition, memory and eternity:

“Memories of all the people wearing ‘jelly’, memories of all the ‘jelly’,

memories of what is happening now, of what might happen…”

The result is the fruit of an imagination that feeds itself, full of every

possibility of illusion, like an ideal space on the border of dreams and

desires. “I think it is omnipresent inside ourselves and everywhere,”

explains Aya Takano. The Jelly Civilization Chronicle represented a real challenge

for the artist, who devoted herself to telling the recent story of Japan, while

crystallizing within it her worries and obsessions as she never had before:

it took an entire year to develop this original and ambitious work, presented and distributed first time in Paris, at the Galerie Perrotin.

“The Jelly Civilization Chronicle”, Aya Takano, 2017,

186-page, 182 × 257 mm. Design: Jun Kawana

Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin – Paris 3

Galleries — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:28:50 +0000

Emmanuel Perrotin’s Gallery represents : Chiho Aoshima, Daniel Arsham, Herman Bas, Sophie Calle, Maurizio Cattelan, Peter Coffin, Johan Creten, Matthew Day Jackson, Wim Delvoye, Elmgreen & Dragset, Lionel Esteve, Daniel Firman, Bernard Frize, Guiseppe Gabellone, Gelitin, Duane Hanson, Jesper Just, Bharti Kher, Kolkoz, Klara Kristalova, Guy Limone, Jin Meyerson, Farhad Moshiri, MR., Takashi Murakami, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Paola Pivi, Claude Rutault, Michael Sailstorfer, Aya Takano, Tatiana Trouve, Piotr Uklanski, Xavier Veilhan, Peter Zimmermann

Galleries in Paris » Aya Takano

TAKANO – PERROTIN

Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin – Paris 3