高木智子 / Tomoko Takagi

Solo Exhibitions
2017
Tomoko Takagi Solo Exhibition “Trace irrelevant” COHJU contemporary art, Kyoto
2016
Tomoko Takagi Solo Exhibition, Gallery Keifu, Kyoto
2015
Tomoko Takagi Solo Exhibition, ARTOTHEQUE, Kyoto
2014
Tomoko Takagi Solo Exhibition, Gallery Keifu, Kyoto
2013
Tomoko Takagi Solo Exhibition, Gallery Morning, Kyoto

Group Exhibitions
2018
“Presence” AYUMI Gallery, Tokyo
“15 years” ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka
2017
“STILL LIFE Painting 2017” Gallery Morning, Kyoto
“Unsweetend? ‒Japanese Contemporary art show- ” House Art, Taiwan
“Insecure tide land” WINWIN ART, Taiwan
2016
“Uhhohhouhouho Art Show” Nami Sagasittekkara, Kyoto
Sakaidani Elementary School Work Exhibition, Sakaidani Elementary School, Kyoto (’17 ’18)
“Insecure tide land” Frees art space, Taiwan
2015
“Selected Artist in Kyoto: 400th Anniversary of RINPA” The Museum of Kyoto, Japan(’16 ’17)
“The sense of others” ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka

What does the sense of sight perceive? My painting expresses the midpoint of the motif (semantic content and space) and the image (colour and material). I focus on things where each suppresses the other, while simultaneously providing room for the other to grow, and explore the difference in recognition from the surface. Objects that someone has arranged, and the relationship between those objects are the motifs of my paintings. Things found in a show-window or someone’s garden is displayed according to somebody else’s taste, and hence possess a unique aura and grace. I find a kind of comfort in this unfamiliarity with those objects, which becomes the creative beginning of my works. Transparent layers made from alkyd resin and oils mingle with each other, and lumps of medium spread out with the brush pile up gradually. This medium enables me to express the stroke of a brush, pursuing the shape of a motif, and at the same time, hampers expression with its stickiness and colour. I am unable to ignore both of these properties, and because of this, some parts of the motif slip out in the painting process. One important aspect in my work is that there is always something I’ve lost while painting. Making strokes with the brush while ruminating upon the immovable distance between my thoughts and the subject, is to me what it means to “paint”.

I first encountered her work at the graduation exhibition of the Kyoto City University of Arts Graduate School. Art, especially painting, is a hot field where every day and night the most talented people from all over the world continue to extensively produce new images. In sports it may be to see a fantastic shoot at the World Cup, and in opera it may be the thrilling encounter with a tenor singer. But as the destiny of one who handles images, artists must accept the cruelty that this may weather, be consumed and turn into a thing of the past in an instant. This is the reason why it is not easy to continue creating iconography with new discoveries each time it is seen, and does not become boring. Then, to be blessed with the talent of being able to continue holding the brush abundantly, freely depicting rich colours and complex lines, is surely a rare thing. Last year in a group exhibition at a gallery in Kaohsiung Taiwan, I saw the local collectors becoming fanatical over her work. If there was to be one word to perfectly fit her work, it would be fanaticism. Experience the ecstasy like that of an opera house in standing ovation after the aria of a primadonna, in front of her work.

(Noboru Tsubaki)