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Lot Essay
A leading international contemporary artist, Aya Takano projects her gaze far and wide in the creation of her works, and the world crafted by her imagination transports viewers in a transcendence of the actual cycle of life. The urge to escape humdrum reality is the motive force driving the creation of Aya Takano's visual fantasy world, one where half-forgotten dreams lurk in these extraordinary images, in which it would seem as if the viewer is ushered into a phantasmic illusionary space. Aya Tanako's art concept springs from the post-WWII rise of a 1970s pop culture brimming with escapism and intoxicating fantasy. She conjures a vaguely familiar yet distant scene to trigger a powerful emotive response in viewers, as she constructs a spiritual sanctuary that empowers her viewers to shake off the shackles of social convention.
In this work, The Chamber of Ivy Lane Byobu (Lot 36), the artist conveys us through a time warp between antiquity and the present, tantalizing viewers with a glimpse of Japan's storied Edo Period (1603-1868), with its characteristic interior spaces and its layouts and use of byobu folding screens as chamber partitions and to serve as a counterfoil to the backdrop of the gold-foil wall, and inscribed with themed traditional calligraphy, everywhere manifesting the unmistakable influence of Edo ukiyo-e prints, and with the painter seemingly intent on summoning the halcyon days of vanished Edo glory in these delicate lines and thin coatings. The finely-wrought wall purposefully glitters gold; the painting panders to the oriental taste for abstract blocks and modeling, but also hearkens back to the gorgeous, grandiloquent artistic style of Vienna Secession artist Gustav Klimt, which discourses in a similar vein.
A unique artistic lexicon voices a spirit of carpe diem and a yearning for freedom; the artist has cast the women as emblems of Japan as a modern society, together with a kabuki actress alongside these Edo ukiyo-e elements in a space resembling a treasure vault. Dressed in period costumes suffused with elements from the Edo-Period, these figures appear with exaggerated but beguiling hair-dos. Their clothing cannot hide the girls' soft bodies or their characteristically extremely sensitive tender pink limbs, particularly in the centre of the painting, where one kneels on both knees, for all the world as if a sacerdotal figure in some ritual, since she is wearing a headdress made up of the koinobori carp windsocks used to honour boys during the Boys' Day festival; her ambivalent sexuality not only adds piquancy to the painting, but also stands as an allegory for equality between men and women, while these painted figures' almost-naked bodies represent Nature's liberating release. The audience is ultimately at a loss to determine whether this realm is reality or fantasy: these maidens may be modern girls sporting old costumes for role-playing games, or this may be a beautiful memory from a space-time traveller's dream; this hazy temporal juxtaposing reflects the mutually-complementary relationship between traditional and modern culture.
The style and pattern of expression and meaning the painter brings to bear resonate with the quintessence of an avant-garde Western Expressionist style. Art historian Horst J?hner. In a comment on the painting Die Brcke (The Bridge) founder in 1906 of the Expressionist Group stated that the association's creative intent was to erect a bridge spanning the divide between artist and viewer. Indeed, in the course of the development of world art history, art- this beautiful superlative - has often been displayed to the world to view and admire with an attitude of sanctimoniousness, but Aya Takano reflects in this set the same intention as The Bridge to break through this invisible divide in the mind; in the painting's bottom right corner a pair of feet, with bent knees on a pair of legs, appears thrust interspersed among the figures; but this is in fact deceptive; as long as the viewer inclines a little forward to view the painting, this enables a visualisation of the individual subject for whom this truncated body substitutes, and thus Aya Takano embarks on the use of visual illusion to convey the viewer across the barriers of space and time so as to enter into the full symbolism of the eternally evergreen Ivy Chamber, and in this way she charts her visual voyage!
The artist's bonanza of moving visual speech successfully integrates traditional and modern culture, mutually enriches their respective art concepts, and does so with an exquisite artistic expression. Takano's works of art contain an unparalleled personal-style vocabulary; like a traditional Japanese haiku poem, with its unique rhyme and rhythm recounting a series of visual vignettes, this glossary ushers us into her rich inner world upon which this fantasy world is built.
In this work, The Chamber of Ivy Lane Byobu (Lot 36), the artist conveys us through a time warp between antiquity and the present, tantalizing viewers with a glimpse of Japan's storied Edo Period (1603-1868), with its characteristic interior spaces and its layouts and use of byobu folding screens as chamber partitions and to serve as a counterfoil to the backdrop of the gold-foil wall, and inscribed with themed traditional calligraphy, everywhere manifesting the unmistakable influence of Edo ukiyo-e prints, and with the painter seemingly intent on summoning the halcyon days of vanished Edo glory in these delicate lines and thin coatings. The finely-wrought wall purposefully glitters gold; the painting panders to the oriental taste for abstract blocks and modeling, but also hearkens back to the gorgeous, grandiloquent artistic style of Vienna Secession artist Gustav Klimt, which discourses in a similar vein.
A unique artistic lexicon voices a spirit of carpe diem and a yearning for freedom; the artist has cast the women as emblems of Japan as a modern society, together with a kabuki actress alongside these Edo ukiyo-e elements in a space resembling a treasure vault. Dressed in period costumes suffused with elements from the Edo-Period, these figures appear with exaggerated but beguiling hair-dos. Their clothing cannot hide the girls' soft bodies or their characteristically extremely sensitive tender pink limbs, particularly in the centre of the painting, where one kneels on both knees, for all the world as if a sacerdotal figure in some ritual, since she is wearing a headdress made up of the koinobori carp windsocks used to honour boys during the Boys' Day festival; her ambivalent sexuality not only adds piquancy to the painting, but also stands as an allegory for equality between men and women, while these painted figures' almost-naked bodies represent Nature's liberating release. The audience is ultimately at a loss to determine whether this realm is reality or fantasy: these maidens may be modern girls sporting old costumes for role-playing games, or this may be a beautiful memory from a space-time traveller's dream; this hazy temporal juxtaposing reflects the mutually-complementary relationship between traditional and modern culture.
The style and pattern of expression and meaning the painter brings to bear resonate with the quintessence of an avant-garde Western Expressionist style. Art historian Horst J?hner. In a comment on the painting Die Brcke (The Bridge) founder in 1906 of the Expressionist Group stated that the association's creative intent was to erect a bridge spanning the divide between artist and viewer. Indeed, in the course of the development of world art history, art- this beautiful superlative - has often been displayed to the world to view and admire with an attitude of sanctimoniousness, but Aya Takano reflects in this set the same intention as The Bridge to break through this invisible divide in the mind; in the painting's bottom right corner a pair of feet, with bent knees on a pair of legs, appears thrust interspersed among the figures; but this is in fact deceptive; as long as the viewer inclines a little forward to view the painting, this enables a visualisation of the individual subject for whom this truncated body substitutes, and thus Aya Takano embarks on the use of visual illusion to convey the viewer across the barriers of space and time so as to enter into the full symbolism of the eternally evergreen Ivy Chamber, and in this way she charts her visual voyage!
The artist's bonanza of moving visual speech successfully integrates traditional and modern culture, mutually enriches their respective art concepts, and does so with an exquisite artistic expression. Takano's works of art contain an unparalleled personal-style vocabulary; like a traditional Japanese haiku poem, with its unique rhyme and rhythm recounting a series of visual vignettes, this glossary ushers us into her rich inner world upon which this fantasy world is built.