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Thursday 6 February

Aya Takano: The Architect of Floating Worlds

Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, I’m going to tell you about Aya Takano, born in 1976 in Saitama. This Japanese artist, who emerged like a mutant cherry blossom in the overly tidy garden of contemporary art, deserves our particular attention.

Imagine for a moment the Japan of the 1980s, where consumer society exploded like a capitalist firework in a neon-saturated sky. It is in this context that Aya Takano developed her artistic universe, populated by androgynous creatures seemingly birthed from a failed laboratory experiment. Her figures, with their disproportionately long limbs and joints reddened like ripe cherries, float in spaces where gravity is merely a polite suggestion. Her paintings are open windows to a world where Newtonian physics has gone on permanent vacation, where the laws of space-time bend to the whims of her unbridled imagination.

The artist draws from the Japanese philosophical concept of “mono no aware”, an acute awareness of the impermanence of things, to create works that oscillate between melancholy and wonder. Her often-nude characters are not there to gratify base instincts but to remind us of our fundamental vulnerability. They drift through urban or cosmic spaces like astronauts adrift, symbolizing our own wandering in a world where traditional landmarks dissolve like sugar in overly hot green tea.

In her iconic series “The Jelly Civilization Chronicle”, Takano propels us into a future where the rigidity of our civilization has liquefied. Buildings, vehicles, even kitchen utensils transform into gelatinous, malleable forms, eerily reminiscent of philosopher Zygmunt Bauman’s theories on “liquid modernity”. This vision of a society in perpetual flux echoes our own era, where identities and certainties dissolve in the acid of rampant modernity.

Her painting technique, which combines the delicacy of ukiyo-e prints with the rawness of contemporary manga, creates a fascinating dialogue between tradition and modernity. Her pastel colors, applied in translucent layers like overlapping silk veils, build dreamlike atmospheres that recall Walter Benjamin’s theories on the aura of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Each canvas becomes a portal to a parallel universe where reality bends to the whims of the imagination, where the boundaries between the possible and the impossible fade into a mist of tender hues.

The 2011 Fukushima disaster marked a decisive turning point in her work, like an artistic earthquake shaking her aesthetic convictions to their foundations. She abandoned acrylics for oils, a more “natural” material, she says, in a quest for meaning and authenticity that transcends mere technical considerations. This shift in medium reflects a deeper realization: art can no longer merely serve as a distorted mirror of reality; it must become a vector for social and environmental transformation, a catalyst for change in a world teetering on the ecological brink.

Her work “May All Things Dissolve in the Ocean of Bliss” (2014) perfectly illustrates this evolution. In this monumental composition, humans, animals, and industrial infrastructures coexist in improbable harmony, like an ecological utopia where technology has finally found its rightful place. It is a visual manifesto that echoes anthropologist Philippe Descola’s theories on the relationship between nature and culture, envisioning a reconciled world where humanity has learned to dance with its technological demons rather than battle them.

Western critics have often dismissed her work as merely an extension of the Superflat movement initiated by Takashi Murakami. What a monumental error! It is reductive and even insulting to an artist who has created a unique visual language, where science fiction and mythology coexist with disarming grace, where eroticism brushes against innocence without ever descending into cheap vulgarity. Her androgynous creatures transcend gender categories, offering a post-binary vision of humanity that resonates strongly with contemporary questions about identity and gender fluidity.

The influence of science fiction novels she devoured in her father’s library is evident, but it goes far beyond mere citation or superficial homage. She creates what philosopher Jean Baudrillard might have called “enchanted simulacra”, representations that no longer seek to imitate reality but to create a new one—more elastic, more poetic, more inclusive. Her art is an exercise in perpetual reinvention, a dance on the tightrope between reality and imagination.

In her more recent works, such as “Let’s Make the Universe a Better Place” (2020), Takano pushes her exploration of the boundaries between reality and fiction even further. She develops a new personal cosmogony where the laws of physics bow to the demands of poetry. Her figures no longer merely float; they literally transcend the constraints of matter, becoming beings of pure light in an ever-expanding universe. This recent evolution in her work echoes philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s theories on becoming and multiplicity, where being is no longer defined by its substance but by its potential for transformation.

Her treatment of urban space is particularly compelling. The cities she depicts are not the anxiety-inducing metropolises of classic cyberpunk but vertical gardens where nature reclaims its rights in unexpected ways. Skyscrapers transform into organic structures, roads become rivers of light, and public spaces morph into playgrounds for her ethereal creatures. This reinvention of urbanity echoes architect Rem Koolhaas’s theories on the generic city, while subverting them playfully and poetically.

Takano’s use of color is equally revolutionary. Her pastel palettes, which might seem saccharine in less skilled hands, become instruments of subtle subversion under her brush. She uses chromatic softness as a Trojan horse, introducing unsettling elements into seemingly innocent compositions. This strategy recalls Roland Barthes’ theories on neutrality as a form of resistance, an approach that defies expectations while avoiding direct confrontation.

Her approach to the human body is particularly fascinating. The impossible proportions of her figures, with their elongated limbs and oversized heads, are not mere stylistic whims. They represent a deliberate attempt to redefine standards of beauty and humanity. In a world obsessed with body normalization, her creatures celebrate difference and strangeness with contagious joy. This is an act of aesthetic resistance that echoes Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity and the social construction of bodily norms.

The narrative dimension of her work is equally remarkable. Each canvas is a potential visual novel, a story unfolding in multiple directions simultaneously. This multidimensional approach to storytelling recalls the literary experiments of the Oulipo, transposed into the visual domain. Her works are story-generating machines, narrative devices that invite viewers to become co-creators of meaning.

For Takano, time is not a unidirectional arrow but a malleable substance that folds upon itself. Past, present, and future intermingle in a complex dance evoking physicist Carlo Rovelli’s theories on the illusory nature of time. Her characters seem to exist in an eternal present, liberated from the constraints of linear chronology.

In her latest works, Takano increasingly explores the notion of community and interconnectedness. Her characters, while individually distinct, seem to share a collective consciousness, connected by invisible threads transcending physical space. This vision of interconnected humanity echoes sociologist Bruno Latour’s theories on actor networks and the collective nature of existence.

Aya Takano is not merely an artist painting dreams; she is an architect building bridges between our rigid world and a universe where fluidity reigns. Her art reminds us that reality, like her floating characters, may be just a matter of perspective, and that gravity, whether physical or social, may be only a convention we can break free from. In a world hurtling toward its demise, her work offers us a breath of fresh air, a space to breathe where imagination can finally spread its wings without fear of burning under the sun of reason.

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