英文テキストのみ掲載
Review for Akihiko Takuma exhibition
Akihiko Takuma’s exhibition titled “Différence et répétition / Tableau en évolution” are now held in Kyoto and Osaka at tree venues : Institut français du Japon – Kansai (Kyoto), GAKEI GIMLET SAAS (雅景錐) (Kyoto) and Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery (Osaka)
Takuma is a Japanese artist based currently in Kanto Aria, who was trained at the Painting Dept. at Shiga University of Education, Japan, and Circulo de Bellas Artes (Madrid, Spain) in 1993-94. The theme of the exhibitions is “Lines in Flight” that he has been working on since 2004, and now his representative works.
In the gallery you will see various sized paintings of gloomy monotonous landscape on which numerous vertical lines are slashed. Also because of the precise colour and the sense of atmosphere, somehow they look like photography works too. At the first glance it is difficult even to describe the works.
Takuma has given us two interesting perspectives which can be a clue when we view his work. He says “I am a conceptual artist, dealing with the conflict of two sides which we always get stuck in between, and trying to get over it to see beyond” and also “it was when I studied in Spain that I realized how hard it was for paint to dry in Japan because of the high humidity, and I became more conscious about the environmental differences between the two places.” The philosophical issue of getting across the boundary, inspired, as he is known, by French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze who is regarded as one of the leading figure of the Post-modernism movement, and the technical issue he confronted as a Japanese artist. They seem to be the points we keep in mind and probably this is the starting point.
The artist gives us the line drenched landscape, as if it depicts the rain or the image is about to disappear in front of us. The line makes the scenery very vague and as if it is being half (some almost) washed away, thus draws us for an instant into the half abstract, no boundary world. It is very quiet conceptual image, but some pieces somehow evoke nostalgic kind of pain of the scenery of rainy rice paddy for instance.
He has refered to some abstract artists who he get inspiration from such as Jackson Pollock, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys. The artist says he never be able to forget the feeling he felt when he first time discovered this style, stroking his big painting brush over the canvas. and some say he has found the way to follow as an artist and is now really beginning to mature. It is pretty exciting to witness his endeavor.