From children bending backwards to play with dinosaurs as meteors fall from the sky, to moth-people inviting viewers to tranquility at the end of a forest road engulfed in orange groves, renowned Japanese artist Aya Takano’s gallery exhibit, “how deep how far we can go,” brought together new artworks from many different worldly inspirations to encompass memories of the past and transcend into the future.
Takano is a central figure in the Superflat postmodern art movement, pioneered by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who is most well-known for his iconic smiling rainbow flower character. Superflat art is characteristically two-dimensional, inspired by Japanese manga and anime styles, and also refers to the modern consumerism of art and artists. The movement aims to draw from both traditional Japanese art and modern pop culture, manifesting in a creative fusion of past and present. These influences are evident in Takano’s works as she blurs lines across time, space, species, gender, and nature. Her art, much of which depicts transcendental, androgynous youth, begs questions of belonging — who are we and why?
As a long-time follower of Takano’s art, I visited “how deep how far we can go” at Perrotin Los Angeles in August. And while I was initially drawn to her work for its Japanese origins and inspirations, I found myself compelled by the many different cultural and ethnic influences that Takano incorporated into her exhibit.
From the very beginning, she emphasized the importance of experiencing the gallery’s layout, as she had designed it to tell a story of its own. In particular, many of the paintings were paired with one another, reflecting the contrasting dynamics of life and youth. In the first room, she introduced viewers to her own life story, starting with “beginning, mother,” and the mirrored version “beginning, father,” reflecting on her childhood in the countryside of Tohoku. This was the first of her series exploring the interactions between contrasting paintings, which can be seen in the opposite shapes and colors intertwined with her parents and grandparents. But while she contrasts their lives and experiences, Takano also introduces the main motif of “how deep how far we can go:” the DNA that connects us all, flowing through her mother and grandmother and continuing across the room to her father and grandfather. Flowers bloom below them in this depiction of life and love across time and space.
Further into the first room were “from present to past, the flow to the center” and “from present to past, a journey to the center,” another set of matching artworks consisting of whimsical, androgynous figures reaching from land to sea, from modern to ancient times. As meteors rain down on the past, these figures catch a brief glimpse of life before this time. In both paintings, Takano intertwined animals in every corner, from the eyes of the modern youth to the edge of the cliffs overlooking the sea. She conveyed that while time has passed, life and memory remain in many forms.
Then, connecting the two was “invitation to tranquility: the world of the center,” depicting a moth-person standing in the middle of a nighttime road surrounded by orange trees and with the moon shining brightly overhead. Through this middle painting, Takano beckons the viewer to meet her between the past and present, and to embark on a journey connecting the two.
In the second and final room, the final paired paintings were displayed on opposite walls, with “the spirit of all plants on earth” on the left and “the spirit of all minerals on earth” on the right. Here, Takano depicted the innate integration of humans with the nature that is around us. With plants not only surrounding but weaving themselves into the figures in these paintings, she emphasized the inherence of humans as a part of nature, and the importance of everything from inanimate minerals to blooming greenery.
Much like the previous set of paintings, Takano also connected these spirits with one in the center: “the spirit of all life on earth”. Consisting of a close-up depiction of the spirit’s face, their hair is composed of eyes, legs, and wings from various sea and land creatures, and their eyes are clouded with mist and water.
On either side of “the spirit of all life on earth” were sets of eyes: those of an alpine ibex, red fox, crested gecko, wolf, eagle owl, whitetip reef shark, bobcat, and toco toucan. Standing in the very back of the gallery under the gaze of these eight eyes, I felt the weight of this spirit settle upon me.
In addition to incorporating these elements of nature and time, which are core values for her Japanese heritage, Takano expanded her collection to encompass many different cultures: Mesopotamia in “the hill of göbekli tepe,” Asia in “former rice-farming culture,” and Africa in “in africa, a person lives a life being one with a cow”.
Whether deliberate or unintentional, I see Takano’s incorporation of non-Western cultures with nature as a commentary on the loss of environmental values in modern Western society. These past figures are quite literally intertwined with nature: the Mesopotamian youth engulfed by birds and features, the Asian farmer navigating the grassland hills and the African shepherd being so connected that they are “one with a cow” and the leaves all around them. The Superflat ideology of rejecting superficiality is highly visible in this set of paintings, as even without direct opposites, the contrast between the past and the present is as prevalent as ever, especially in the gallery held in the middle of the urban LA sprawl.
Finally, returning to “the spirit of all life on earth,” “a shining solar system” hung above their face, encompassing everything in the exhibit and all life that had been displayed. In fact, this was the only work in the exhibit that did not feature any humans or nature at all, but also encapsulated all of the humans and nature in the entire system on a much larger scale. After zooming in to all the elements of life on Earth — parents, grandparents, the present, the past, minerals, plants, animals, all beings everywhere — it felt almost like a last breath to observe this final work, reminding us just how small we really are in the grand scheme of the universe, but also how complex and beautiful our existence is.
By honoring all forms of life and encompassing memory across blurred lines, Aya Takano created a masterpiece of an exhibit with “how deep how far we can go,” drawing connections between humans and nature, past and present, and life and death. It is no surprise that she has become such a core part of the Superflat movement, as the journey she has crafted in this gallery alone transcends time and space, forming spiritual connections across the entire universe.
Visual Credit: Natalie Tokita
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