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For the work " Immortal landscape (Fountain)" and "From the shore"
JANUARY 26, 2025Image of work : " Immortal landscape (Fountain)" (2024), Mud from the Red hot spring in Beppu, pigments and oil on canvas from the Pool of Blood Hell The joint research with the Shiseido Mirai Research Group gave me the opportunity to explore the possibilities of material exploration more consciously. The concept of Fluctuating Painting Space, which I arrived at by fusing the characteristics of my original brushstrokes, my own pigments and a light-reflecting material known as pearlescent material, has broadened my own interest in the world.In the process of discovering the Japanese word 'Mosho' , I learnt the name of a colour unique to Japan, and the connection between colour and language is something that carries the four seasons and culture of Japan into the present day. And, at a deeper level, I became reawakened to a renewed interest in the Japanese philosophy of life and death, which is a fusion of Shintoism and Buddhism, and is linked to an animistic spirituality.With this interest as a basis, I travelled around Japan in exhibitions and was finally invited to Beppu City, Oita Prefecture, as a residency site. Having studied Western contemporary art in the UK, Nature (Nature) is traditionally seen in Western philosophy as something that confronts humans. However, through my research into colour, which is essential to the production of my work, I began to wonder whether I could directly incorporate into my work the relationship with nature, both physically and spiritually coexisting with it, as people of ancient times felt. Through the production of paintings, I wanted to keep the actual state of the earth in my work, as if I were approaching the ancient Buddhist experience of nature (jinen). I came to the conclusion that this would be an act of creation in which the unconscious and the body overlap.Beppu has the largest number of springs and the largest amount of hot springs in Japan, and we can physically feel the continuous flow of geothermal energy. It was a place that evoked our human physicality, which we easily forget in urban spaces.As I have also explored in the series of works I have created with the motif of water, which transforms and circulates, I have used ‘water’ as a metaphor for the active positive force that celebrates and animates life in my pictorial expression. However, a visit to Beppu dismisses such static notions. It recalled the smallness of human existence and a sense of awe towards nature, which lives in the earth that even contains geothermal heat.The sublimation of these ideas was the five-painting work 'Immortal landscape (Fountain)' and 'From the Shore'. At this time, I physically incorporated a part of the land into the compositional elements of the work. The mud from the Red hot spring was dried, refined and reused as paint. This series of processes is a decision that emphasises the physical aspect of the expressionist who generates a pictorial space using my own body as a medium.The encounter between my own 'life' and the 'place' with its own energy overlaps with the memories and history of the place, including those who once visited Beppu for a hot-spring cure, and at the same time, the far-reaching expanse of nature in its haze is a metaphor for the connection with time and the flow of generation that is longer than a single human lifetime.Image of work : "From the shore" (2024), Mud from the Red hot spring in Beppu, pigments and oil on canvas from the Pool of Blood Hell
For the series ‘Mosho’.
JANUARY 25, 2025I consider colour as a substance that works within existence. The works produced through the search to deconstruct the historicity of painting and the authority attached to it, are a pictorial space for dialogue with the universal unconscious beyond the personal unconscious.Through the blue abstract paintings in ‘Otherwise than being’ (2017-), I have bee exploring how I can express a sense of fluctuation that works with the unconscious. In the process, I conducted a series of studies on air perspective, methods of chiaroscuro, and Mogu method of Eastern art, and while reproducing traditional Western painting techniques, I developed and explored my own technique of brushstrokes, inspired by the blotting and blurring of Suiboku (ink).In the midst of the development of such expressive techniques and the production and presentation of works, a joint research project with the Shiseido Mirai Research Group began in 2022. The aim of this research was to discover new aesthetic and presentational expressions by collaborating a scientific approach to the application of pearlescent materials used as cosmetic ingredients and the principles of their luminescence with the knowledge of artistic expression. The work ‘Mosho: in between sanctuary and climate’ was presented as a result of this research, and was created during a residency in Beppu City, Oita Prefecture. ‘Mosho’ means emptiness, formlessness and drifting in Chinese-derived reading. On the other hand, in native Japanese-derived reading, it can be read as ‘Mizuha’ meaning the god of water in the mythological world. I named this title as I thought it appropriate for this peculiarly multiple pictorial space, where the work changes depending on the angle from which it is viewed.The layer in the foreground is composed of pearlescent material. The colour of the reflected light shines in various colours, depending on the properties of each pearlescent material. The first layer, which is transparent beneath the colours of the reflected light, is painted with pigments and oils. When I was searching for a way to express the delicate gradation that would maximise the soft glow of the glowing translucent pearl material, I was given the opportunity to stay in Oita. I then started to create bright blue paints inspired by the colours of the Seto Inland Sea and the blue of the expansive sky seen from the port of Beppu.I usually mix pigments and oils, knead them together on a marble plate, and create each and every approximate colour with subtly different shades, by making them myself. The gradations created in this way and my unique blurring effect gives rise to fluctuations that look like clouds or the sea. The shimmering is amplified by overlapping pearl materials, evoking different images depending on the angle of view. The different refractive indexes of the light from the pearlescent material and the different pigments appear to the viewer's eye as a fluctuating field (a shimmering sensation). This ontologically questioning two-dimensional work is intended to immerse the viewer experientially as he or she changes the distance and angle to the work as the light changes in the exhibition space. That immersive experience of viewing is at the same time a meditative experience, in which the viewer experiences a fluctuation of consciousness that reaffirms and forgets their sense of time and memories of their inner world. In this sense, the artwork is a medium that connects the artist and the viewer, and a device for examining together the possibilities of the human body as a sensory organ.
For the series' Otherwise than being’
JANUARY 25, 2025My main focus as an artist is the exploration of how it is possible to extend our perception of the world from the linguistic perceptions that we can manipulate, into the realm of non-verbal perceptions, through the application of colour.Through my experience as an aspiring painter and studying abroad on my own, I became interested in how we humans, with our religious, cultural and linguistic differences, can genuinely share the experience of beauty and the experience of empathy and healing that comes with it.Through colour, I explore the space for overcoming conceptual conflicts in an increasingly complex and realistic world by trying to get closer to a world in a realm that cannot be explained by language. It is a ‘response to reconciliation’ to the world in order to overcome ideologies and differences in an age of post-truth and fragmentation. One of the roles that painting has historically played is that of transmitting symbolism and authority. By carefully avoiding the explicit presentation of form, I seek a contemplative space where the viewer, the artist and the object depicted are equally present, and where we can go beyond our personal unconscious to commune with the universal unconscious. It is a means of resisting division, discrimination and social oppression, and the ambiguous image, which avoids the formation of meaning, is an act of seeking out the space where light can be delivered to the human mind beyond language. The pictorial space that emerges in this way creates a meditative experience, gently unravelling our unconscious assumptions and anguish. While working on several series that expand from the exploration of materials, I have consistently believed in the possibility of gentleness and harmony in the ambiguity and fluctuation of colours. It is my hope that this will lead to a fundamental contemplation of ‘the world’ and ‘we humans’, and a renewal of the way we perceive the reality in front of us. This series of blue abstract paintings, ‘Otherwise than being’, which was conceived around in 2010 and officially began continuous production in 2017, was very strongly inspired by the writings of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who lived as a witness to a century of war and pondered the question ‘What is peace?’ to the utmost limit. Through the colour blue, I would like to invite viewers to reflect on the various conflicts and hesitations that are not straightforward and cannot be fully expressed in words, as well as on the possibilities of overcoming these conflicts. I feel that each of us living our daily lives with such feelings for ourselves and others is the fundamental state of mind that is essential to realising peace.
For the series of SAKURA
FEBRUARY 28, 2022I regard this series as a metaphysical exploration of "what an existence is" following the series of"Propositions"(2015-) and the series of blue abstract paintings "Otherwise than being".The inspiration came not from the traditional mountain cherry tree, which has appeared in songs and literature since ancient times, but from the "clonal" nature of the Someiyoshino, which was developed in the Edo period and exploded in popularity after the Meiji period. It is not the cherry tree as a single tree or a single life, but a group of trees as a phenomenon that constitutes space. Or a non-living sequence. I was attracted to a certain kind of irascibility of "cherry blossoms".It is a way of being that is different from the "individual" that has spatial and temporal delimitations, even though it is life. The vague expanse of color, in which the individual seems to sink into, resembles the abyss that lurks behind existence, as if described by a French philosopher Blaise Pascal in his writing "Pensee", or as I have explored in my own work to date.“ I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom, and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape. ‘ -[Thoughts / Blaise Pascal ; translated by W.F. Trotter. Letters / translated by M.L. Booth. Minor works /translated by O.W. Wight ; with introductions and notes]. New York : P.F. Collier, c1910. The Harvard classics v.48. What I would like to present though this series is an experience of time and space that shakes the boundaries of one's own existence, which is similar to Pascal's phraseology. Painting, for me, is also an exploration of how I can embody such an experience through materiality within colours. In other words, a painting is like an entrance, a cross-section, or a window into that space.Often, when viewing cherry blossoms, I feel as if my own sense of existence and space-time is distorted.Perhaps we are aroused by cultural memories and feel a sense of dizziness. Or perhaps we experience a melting away of individual boundaries as the cherry tree in front of us rises not as a single tree, but as a group of clones. In any case, what cherry blossoms bring is a sense of pluralistic and non-living repetition and fusion, not the monotonous time of birth and death or the contours of individual existence.Through my work, I try to create an experience of time and space created by cherry blossoms. I hope that the viewer will also surrender to the experience of time and space in which his or her own existence seems to sink in.
Hiroki Yamamoto : Genealogy of Blue between decision and indecision about the series of blue paintings by Towa Takaya
OCTOBER 03, 2020Text translated in English will be released soon. the original text in Japanese is now shown. Please click and change the language setting.
Blue towards blue ー reflective writing by Towa Takaya
OCTOBER 03, 2020Text translated in English will be released soon. the original text in Japanese is now shown. Please click and change the language setting.
For the work of "Proposition 14" text by Junya Utsumi
AUGUST 31, 2015Towa Takaya creates with her paintings, wether abstract or figurative, a space in which physically and relation between materials are presented (not represented) in a different way from the world they usually belong to.Proposition series is an on going project, inspired by Ludwig Wittegenstain’s Tractates Logico-Philosophicus; “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”Towa displays this proposition as a painting. In other words, her painting in this series points out the space where language doesn’t start to generate meaning but have presence; like, the sounds of bird cries and a ripple. Proposition 14 bodies that seem incomplete but exist as bodies; while a child conceived in the right figure begins to have his/her body, he/she is still physically and ontologically connected to the expecting figure. Thus, the presence in ambivalent state (with regards to meaning, corporeality and sex0 is thrown into the world on the bid canvas, and there of affirmatively recognized as being-there. In this way, Towa proposes as paintings the origin of space where we cannot speak.Thence, appearance of objects in the painting displays the presence, or being in functions as symbol or sign. Words by Junya Utsumi