Daisuke Takahashi

 

Daisuke Takahashi

Born in Saitama Prefecture in 1980, Daisuke Takahashi became known for his abstract paintings with impastos consisting of many layers of pigment. In recent years, he has gradually shifted his style and unveiled some eccentric paintings with concrete motifs.

Over a period of about five years beginning in 2011, Takahashi made a transition from the impastoed “nighttime paintings” he produced while facing the canvas alone at night under fluorescent lighting to thinly painted “daytime paintings” that also took in the world outside himself and were produced under the bright light of day, and further to his “sleep paintings” for which he applied a coat of varnish on the uppermost layer of the painting, thereby physically separating himself from the painting. This transition was occasioned by a switch to the daytime in his production rhythm owing to changes in his family makeup and life environment.

Subsequently, beginning around 2016, germinal renderings of numerals and other symbol-type markings began to emerge on his works. In more recent years, Takahashi showed his Daydream series that incorporates ideographic characters on the canvas for the names of periods (Jomon, Yayoi, etc.) and eras (Heisei, Reiwa, etc.) of Japanese history. This was followed by works that took as their motifs familiar items such as children’s toys, a frying pan, a one-yen coin, a pineapple, and the exterior walls of houses.

Takahashi heads to the tableau after preparing a detailed plan drawing and repeatedly checking it. In Takahashi’s works, the pictorial space deepens while maintaining a close connection with living space. The pieces appear before our eyes as devices that enable us to re-encounter a world we thought we already knew, and to get a new and fresh perception of it.

Takahashi has developed his art in new directions while earnestly coming to grips with the constantly changing environment surrounding us. Going forward as well, he will undoubtedly continue with his activity and thought in his insatiable exploration of painting.

His main exhibitions in recent years were Halfway Happy Vol. 5, Daisuke Takahashi – RELAXIN’ (2021, gallery αM), Sazaedo 2020 – Modern Spiral and a Hundred Paintings (2020, Art Museum & Library, Ota), NEW VISION SAITAMA 5 – The Emerging Body (2016, Museum of Modern Art, Saitama), Present-Day Paintings – Two-Dimensional Works of Four Artists (2015, Kawagoe City Art Museum), and The Way of Painting (2014, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery).

 

Collection

Takahashi Ryutaro Collection

 

 

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