“New Year Memories, Japan China Town” 2022. Oil on canvas. 97×130.3cm. ©2022 Aya Takano/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Image provided by the artist and Perrotin.
Aya Takano’s paintings exhibited last year at the Perrotin Hong Kong space left many viewers amazed, as she incorporated many authentic elements of Hong Kong from the 1960s to the present, full of old Hong Kong charm. Continuing the localization in her work, Aya Takano recently added many diverse and rich Shanghai-style features in her solo exhibition “Thank You World, You Now Look a Little Bit Like a Wonderland” at Perrotin Shanghai, such as carrying poles, shadow puppets, blue and white school uniforms, Nanjing Road, White Rabbit candies, soup dumplings… making the audience feel like they are traveling in Shanghai with the sweet girl under her brush!
“Shanghai in the Beginning of Spring, 1990s” serves as the origin of this series, emanating from the artist’s impression of friends eating grilled birds, concretizing a fictional, modernizing 1990s Shanghai through advertising signs, traffic signs, and city landmarks.
Ayano Takano once lived in both Japan and China for a period of time. She used fragments from her time living in both places as clues, gathering narratives from artist friends about her personal experiences. Through characterized figures and theatrical elements of life, Takano Ayano paints dreamlike scenes with a local touch.
In terms of setting, the girls were born in Japan, spent some time in Hong Kong, returned to the Chinese city circle of Shanghai, and then carried with them a reinterpreted cultural imprint to Shanghai; in terms of depiction, although we can occasionally capture typical elements of Chinese culture, these elements come with a certain depiction and observation habit of Japanese cities; in terms of behind-the-scenes creation, these paintings are more like a chorus, with a friend’s grandfather’s memories of Shanghai, the narrator’s experiences of growing up in Chinatown, and the childhood experiences shared by the sister who traveled to Shanghai… The wandering guests come to Kayo Ayase’s canvas, bringing stories of a foreign land, and after multiple retellings, the artist constructs an ideal Shanghai.
In addition, the women in the picture are endowed with a “body that does not grow”, appearing gentle and harmless, conforming to the “mimicry” characteristics of otaku orientation, but they also point to another possibility: as beings detached from reality, the girls project an “uncivilized” childhood that has not been socialized or disciplined, metaphorizing a primal power and state of freedom beyond modern cognition, implying a hidden future.
“Thank you world, at this moment you are like a paradise” Ayano Takano
Date: From now until September 10
Location: 3rd floor, 27 Huqiu Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai
Image source and learn more: Shanghai Perrotin
