Aya Takano - KYOBAI, Japanese Art and Culture London Wednesday, April 2, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    KaiKai Kiki Studio, Tokyo

  • Catalogue Essay

    Aya Takano’s remarkable graphic skills are brought to bear on an eccentric world of young girls, once again prepubescent, often naked and with slender, supple bodies. In almost every case their joints, fingertips, toes, areolae and cheeks are reddened, suggesting chafing or inordinate sensitivity.
    Reworking fragments of original prints or drawing on the sexual positions they show, she has made a series of erotic, not to say pornographic paintings and drawings that offer a sly mix of lolicon and homosexuality under cover of an age-old tradition. The bodies of her sylphlike young girls remain unchanged, still marked by the red patches that take on a more overtly sexual significance here; and even wearing kimonos and traditional coiffures, these child-women unashamedly give free rein to their desires and fantasies – unless they are those of the artist herself. Thus reinterpreting the visuals of shunga, and even hentai, she succeeds in tweaking today’s taboos while demonstrating yet again her distinctive talent for drawing and colour.T. Raspail & I. Bertolotti (translation by J.Tittensor) Introduction in ‘Chiho Aoshima – Mr. – Aya Takano.’ Paris 2006 p. 7

257

An Infinite Lake

1998
Acrylic on canvas.
102.7 x 72.9 cm. (40 1/4 x 28 3/4 in).

Estimate
£120,000 - 120,000 

Sold for £54,500

KYOBAI, Japanese Art and Culture

3 Apr 2008, 6pm
London