KENTA TAKAHASHI

Born in 1996 in Aichi, Japan
Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan
 

Trained in Japanese traditional style painting called “Nihonga,” Kenta Takahashi gains inspiration by surveying the urban landscapes of Tokyo. He recreates pieces of these seemingly ubiquitous scenes with washi paper, mineral pigments, and shell powder layered with silver leaf to convey certain textures.

Takahashi considered his art practice to be akin to a diary or writing memos: the layering of one’s lived experience with one’s subjective account of said lived experience. To say it another way, the process of his art production is a record the artist’s experience filtered through his embodied experience.

Takahashi’s work also aptly makes a parallel between the technique of pigment painting and the way we as a contemporary society intake visual stimuli, which is that in both instances the image is created through the accumulation of particles. Just as, digital images are comprised of a collection of pixel dots, “Nihonga” images are composed of particles from stones and minerals.

By using the pigment painting technique mixed with silk-screen application of the pigments, Takahashi constantly pushes the boundaries of “Nihonga”, often considered a traditional genre. Through the contrast of Takahashi’s techniques as well as subject matter, his paintings defy expectations and present new approaches to the concepts of high vs low, craftsmanship vs industrialism, East vs West and finally past vs future.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2021

FILTER 1MG (Medel Gallery Shu, Tokyo)

2019

SAVE NOW (Yoh Gallery, Tokyo)

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2021

SCOPE Miami, SEIZAN Gallery Booth (Miami Beach, FL)

2021

Rabbit Hole Peeps (Anagra Gallery, Tokyo) 

2020

MIND THE GAP (The Blank Gallery, Tokyo)
Collector’s Collective (Medel Gallery Shu, Tokyo)
Art Summit 2020 (Courtyard Hiroo, Tokyo)

2018

A-TOM Art Award Exhibition (Courtyard Hiroo, Tokyo)

EXHIBITIONS

SCOPE MIAMI BEACH