Aya Takano


Aya Takano is a Japanese painter, Superflat artist, manga artist, and science fiction essayist. Aya Takano is represented by Kaikai Kiki, the artistic production studio created in 2001 by Takashi Murakami.

Early life and influence

Takano was born in Saitama, Japan. She spent her childhood reading her father's library, which consisted of many books on natural sciences and science fiction. Exotic animals and landforms combined with an urban city are common themes in her artwork, and are intended to show the juxtaposition between future and fantasy. Takano cited in a documentary made by the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin that she was always fascinated by the unusual forms of nature and animal life, and desires to have such shapes represented in her work.
Osamu Tezuka's science fiction was also an early influence in Takano's life, and had a lasting impact on her dreamy perception of the world. She cites in the book Drop Dead Cute by Ivan Vartanian, that she really believed everything she read was true until she was nineteen. Takano states that sometimes even now she imagines possessing the ability to fly and is uninterested in the constrictions of being grounded.
When it was time for her to start thinking about college, Takano told her parents she wouldn't attend unless she was allowed to enter an art program. In 2000, she received a bachelor's degree from Tama Art University in Tokyo, and, soon after, became an assistant for leading Japanese Contemporary Artist Takashi Murakami, the founder of the Superflat art movement, who became her first mentor and jump-started her career.

Development of style

Murakami was looking to exhibit the work of young artists and to help create an artistic community for like-minded artists that used the Superflat style. The Superflat movement, popularized by Murakami himself, is about emphasizing the two dimensionality of figures, which is influenced by Japanese manga and anime, while dually exposing the fetishes of Japanese consumerism. Through the basic ideas of this movement, he created the Kaikai Kiki Co., a group where five out of the seven members are women.
In the 1980s, the look of pre-pubescent girls became the target of consumer culture in Japanese society. This infantilization and objectification of the female was seen most heavily in Japan's otaku culture. Japanese female artists like Takano seek to reinvent the otaku culture through a feminine perspective. Takano in particular is interested in depicting how the future will impact the role of the female heroine in society. Her figures, often androgynous, float through her alternate realities partially clothed or fully nude. Takano denies that she is trying to reveal anything specific about sex, but rather, with the slim bodies, bulbous heads, and large eyes, she is trying to emphasize her figures' temporary suspension from adulthood; the redness on the figures' joints, such as the elbows, knees, and shoulders, is supposed to convey that they are still engaged in the growing process, mentally and physically. Takano's playful and ambiguous visions of the future, especially one which revolves around the feminine, serves as a way for her to create her own mythology, free from the chains of reality.
She is represented by, Hong Kong and Paris.

Solo exhibitions

2015
2014
  • "La Maison d'Aya", BIBO, Hong Kong
2012
  • "Heaven Is Inside Of You", Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong
  • "To Lose Is To Gain", Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
2011
  • SieboldHuis, Leiden, Netherlands
2010
  • "Rooms of the World", Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
  • "Aya Takano", Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany
  • Hong Kong Art Fair, Booth Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Hong Kong
2009
2008
  • "Toward Eternity" Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France
2007
  • "Wild dogs, hawks, owls, cats, a landfill the size of 44 and a half Tokyo Domes, the stratosphere", Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Miami, USA
  • "Tradition and modernity", curated by Hélène Kelmachter, Miró Foundation, Barcelona, Spain
2006
  • "Aya Takano", Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France
  • "City Dog", Parco Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Parco Gallery, Nagoya, Japan
2005
2004
2003
  • Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France
2002
  • Space Ship EE, nanogalerie, Paris, France
2000
  • "Hot Banana Fudge", NADiff, Tokyo, Japan
1997
  • "SHU WA KIMASERI", shop33, Tokyo, Japan

Group exhibitions

2010
2009
2008
"Kaikai Kiki Artists," Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2007
  • "Kawaii! Japan now", Foundation Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain
  • "The Door to Summer", Art Tower Mito, Mito, Japan
2006
  • "Spank the Monkey", Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom
  • Etoile, Xavel, Inc.
  • "Aya Takano, Chiho Aoshima, Chinatsu Ban Exhibition", Mizuho Oshiro Gallery, Kagoshima, Japan
2005
2004
  • "T-Junction", Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France
  • "Fiction. Love: Ultra New Vision in Contemporary Art", Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan
  • "Chiho Aoshima, Mr., Aya Takano", Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin at LFL Gallery, New York, USA
  • "Tokyo Girls Bravo", Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, USA
2003
  • "Girls Don't Cry", Parco Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
  • Naoki Takizawa for Issey Miyake, Tokyo, Japan
  • "Hope—The Future is in Our Hands", LaForet Harajuku, Tokyo
2002
  • "The Japanese Experience – Inevitable", Das Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
  • "Tokyo Girls Bravo 2", NADiff, Tokyo, Japan
  • "Chiho Aoshima, Aya Takano, Mr., Takashi Murakami", Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France
2001
2000
  • "Superflat", Parco Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
1999
  • "Tokyo Girls Bravo", NADiff, Tokyo; Parco Gallery, Nagoya, Japan
  • "Hiropon Show", Parco Gallery, Nagoya, Japan
  • "Hiropon 32/80", NADiff, Tokyo, Japan
1998
1997
  • Hiropon Show, shop33, Tokyo; Iwataya Z-side, Fukuoka, Japan
  • Hiropon Show, Manken Gallery, Kanazawa, Japan

Literature

  • 2005, Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture Edited by Takashi Murakami
  • 2005, Drop Dead Cute By Joan Vartanian
  • 2010, Aya Takano By Jennifer Higgie