Daisuke Takeya’s “No Man’s Land” is his 5th solo exhibition with the gallery, presenting a new series distinct from, and yet analogous to, the parts of his practice that have been exhibited with the gallery over the past 20 years. Takeya’s previous show at the CCG, “Breaking the Waves,” was connected to the aftermath of the devastating 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. This exhibition picks up where he left off, revisiting Fukushima’s ‘no man’s lands’ a decade after the accident, through the lens of a global pandemic.
Two of the contemplative portraits in the show were painted in the desolate landscapes of the coastal areas of the Fukushima Prefecture that had been abandoned due to radiation, with the local population slowly returning to their homes in recent years. The remaining six paintings are set in different countries, in environments left empty due to health advisories during the COVID pandemic. In a time of complete isolation, Takeya traversed borders and restrictions to capture these life-size portraits of women from around the world.
In contrast to his previous portrait series, these paintings depict the subjects within specific but unrecognizable settings, anonymizing the sitter’s identity and their location. The series travels through indistinguishable environments and nameless subjects to examine human connection in a time of enforced separation.
“No Man’s Land” is characterized by Takeya’s masterful rendering of skin and landscape, continuing his ongoing “struggle of technique,” balancing the tactile texture of thick coats of oil paint and the minuscule details that have come to define his canvases.
Having been trained in figurative painting at the New York Academy of Art, Takeya’s women subjects reflect the changing landscape of the bijinga genre in 20th-century Japan, which saw polarized reactions to the subject matter of beautiful women (bijin) being painted in the yōga (western) style. But Takeya’s bijins do not reflect the ideal of one empire’s standardized gender dynamics, instead, they represent a postcolonial exploration of the classical genre – international, diverse, and unsystematic.
This series follows his previous connection-based portraits series, eyes of a child, in which Takeya painted 200 of his students and recreated their artwork to investigate the ‘origin of creativity,’ and his series documenting survivors of human trafficking and sex slavery committed by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. The latter portraits have yet to be exhibited, as their premiere at the Cultural Center of the Philippines has been postponed since the outbreak of the pandemic.
In addition to the new portraits, “No Man’s Land” will feature a condensed survey of Takeya’s 20 years with the gallery, including pieces from the Everybody Loves You series – diptychs of Torontonians juxtaposed with the Manhattan skyline. The North Gallery will feature two large-scale paintings from the Kara series that he is perhaps most known for, expansive abstract skies with diminutive city/landscapes at the bottoms of the canvases. Memoir of Fukushima, from the 2016 exhibition “Breaking the Waves” will also be on display.
