30 Oct 2009

Zonca & Zonca presents Takako Kimura | Nippon All Stars

Zonca & Zonca is pleased to announce the opening of 'Nippon All Star', the first solo show in Italy by Japanese artist Takako Kimura.

A multitude of small and colorful found objects inhabit and animate Kimura's creative universe.

For her new series Stickers2009, the artist has collected popular character's stickers of different forms depicting a unique subject and had combines them into collages. What seems at first glance as an arbitrary clutter of found objects results in a precise composition whose shape refers to the singular elements. The latter are made to stand alone but when they are sorted and arranged by the artist they all begin to compete with one other to grasp the observer's attention.

The result of this meticulous aggregative process is a unique ideal and stylized form where the common intrinsic identity of the singular elements unite the composition's varied subjects. Her minute worlds seems to proffer an entirely new mode of looking suggesting a concern to connect a universal idea, to create something where multiple viewpoint are possible.

Bears, rabbits, butterflies and ladybugs wander in a fantastic and surreal dimension were the playful aspect of the formal composition refers to the Japanese cartoonist tradition of 'manga.'

In her work the separate identities seem to interact, to merge and to collaborate together in order to fulfill a superior unity, to create an ideal world. Beneath the childish and lively aesthetic, Kimura conveys an important concept, deep-rooted in the Japanese culture: the idea of 'belonging' the idea of the 'group' as an expression of a superior morality and collective power and a unique means of communication.

The tri-dimensional transposition of the stickers series' aggregative process produces 'Celestial Spheres', the two sculptures that Kimura created for the space. Small stuffed colorful bears and rabbits are encapsulated in transparent plastic wrappers whose shapes resemble that of a big bear and a rabbit respectively. The constriction in which the little animals find themselves create an uncanny and disturbing effect.

Different ideal words form galaxies and constellations in the two pieces titled 'Atlas Celeste', where the various macro-subjects assembled together appear in relation to one another, trapped in an action plan generating new and unexpected dialogues. The works are the first of her stickers series that represent multiple figures on a same plan. In each case a hero motive, outstanding because of his number of variations and therefore in its final size defining itself as an especially popular motive, is locked together with other different motives as if they are in a cage. The question of being and appearing emerges here in the contraposition between the bear that represent the hero and his pendant that appear to be bear-shaped in the same way but closer it actually composed of other animals motifs. The stickers seems here to struggle over which is the best original which is merely a copy of the original and which is a copy of a copy. In research to recognize truth and falsity and distinguish between them it is not possible to do more then to compare available objects. There is no longer any escape outwards.

Kimura was born in Chiba - Japan- in 1974 and lives and works between Berlin and Tokyo.