Nobuaki Takekawa Biography

Takekawa graduated From the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2002 from the Oil Painting department, however, he truly works across a myriad of mediums and techniques within one exhibition, or even in the same work. Perhaps partly as a result of this of learning new techniques to fit his conceptual ideal, while his visual style is difficult to pin down, they often share a child-like or primitive aesthetic, reinforcing his non-conformist stance as an artist.

Since breaking out as an artist just after the turn of the millennium, Takekawa seems to be consumed by certain ideas and themes which he carries out to their logical extremes. His 2003 series, Dream Pillow explored his intuitive conception of sleep being the time when a person is most alone, and the only companion on “the journey” that is a person’s dream is their pillow. After several smaller pieces that explored this idea came the final piece in the Dream Pillow series:  an actual, three-metre tall working Ferris wheel inside the gallery space, carrying different types of pillows through the air on a perpetual, private journey. Although this final piece was an ambitious and attention-grabbing work that delighted even children, throughout the entire process Takekawa brings the viewers along to glimpse his inner workings and bring us to the same conclusion.

More recently his concerns have turned to the ocean, maps and questions about national and personal identities. We are Pirates of Modern History (2013) is an exhibition with a striking model skeleton frame of a ship occupying the centre space. Called Galley in the Age of Great Knowledge, the piece is populated with porcelain figures of regular, modern-day people rowing the oversized oars while the captain patrols down the centre aisle. This is a commentary on the situation in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown of 2011 and how nothing seems to have changed. Behind on the wall is an 8-metre map of an imaginary island, Island of Nuclides (2012), cleanly executed in bright colours in the manner of maps used at schools. But on closer inspection it is based on a periodic table with unstable elements on the coasts, and among the sea-monsters, compasses and other typical images you find on the edges of maps are the now even-more terrifying images of infamous nuclear accidents. Overhead from the ceiling hang small globes, each cut out from a larger map, as he says, to “break down an image of earth so as to focus on the various traditions of each region that is represented.” The map from which the globes are taken from is also exhibited, with Takekawa’s own figurative paintings of non-Western civilizations partially visible in the gaps. This recurring technique from his previous work takes on even more significance in as the small globes dangle above the anonymous people rowing the galley into uncharted directions.

Another, and a more immediate reaction for Nobuaki Takekawa to the Fukushima disaster, was Nomadism (2011), which used the cow as a motif. The centrepiece of the series—a typical Takekawa touch—is a more-than life sized sculpture of a cow, actually constructed from used milk cartons. Takekawa was shocked to see cows left behind in the evacuation zone, and relayed this in a way viewers would grasp intuitively, by the ubiquity of the 1-litre milk carton.  Nomad in the City (2011), his figurative drawings that were exhibited alongside the giant cow sculpture, show different coloured cows inhabiting the eerily-empty playgrounds, temples and greenhouses. 

Nobuaki Takekawa has been exhibiting around Japan and is represented by the Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, where in 2012 he held a retrospective covering the years from 2001-2012. In recent years he has participated in notable group exhibitions including the 12th Biennale de Lyon at the Musee d’art contemporian de Lyon, Roppongi Art Night at ROI Roppongi, and Real Japanesque: The Unique World of Japanese Contemporary” at the National Museum of Art, Osaka. Takekawa has exhibited as far afield as Korea, Singapore and France and his work can be found in the collection of the National Museum of Art, Osaka, and La Collection Lambert, Avignon (France).

Text by Ruben van Mansum