TAKANO RYUDAI

bodies includes Takano’s Human Body 1/1, Stand up, Kikuo! and Reclining Woo-Man series featuring male nudes. In contrast to the way that a painter actively ‘reproduces’ a subject by depicting it, a photograph ‘shows’ that subject automatically and mechanically, the agency of the photograph- taker receding as it merges with the device of the camera. However Takano notes that in recent years, photographic works increasingly encourage interrogation not in terms of what they show or ‘have reproduced’ but what is actively being reproduced by the photographer, and such questioning, more conscious of the photographing agent, means that people are approaching what is in the frame of a photo much as they would a painting. Thus photography is turning into painting.

Reclining Woo-Man in particular is modelled on the reclining nude that is a long-standing staple of Western art, indicating a strong connection to painting. This exhibition reconsiders the status of the subject/agent in photographic bodily expression by drifting between painting and photography, in the narrow space between actively ‘reproducing,’ and ‘automatic’ reproduction.

Don’t miss this exhibition presented as part of the Interrogating Photographs series at Yumiko Chiba Associates. As a bonus, on June 14 there will also be a short lecture by art critic Ryo Sawayama, and talk by Takano himself.