Teppei Takeda, “Paintings of Painting”
I visited Teppei Takeda’s solo exhibition “Paintings of Painting.” The venue was Maho Kubota Gallery in Gaienmae.
As his first solo show in Tokyo, anticipation had been building considerably.
I attended the opening reception, which drew a striking crowd and was packed to capacity.
Judging solely from photographs, Takeda’s works look like thick, heavily impasto paintings.
You seem to sense the sweep of the brush across the canvas and the weight of paint laid on thickly — but the impression changes dramatically when you view them up close.
The works are abstract portraits, all painted on canvases of a fixed 91cm × 72.7cm.
And when you draw your eye closer, the surface reveals itself as far more intricate than it appears from a distance — a fine, meticulous painting rendered with an astonishingly slender brush.
The canvas surface, which seems built up with dense strokes of pigment, is in fact carefully and painstakingly rendered.
Brushstrokes that look as if painted in a burst of momentum are, on closer inspection, the product of movements calculated with the utmost care.
The production time is said to be extremely long — around three months per work!
By the time of the opening, every work had already sold.
Many collectors could be seen asking to be placed on a waiting list on the spot.
Backyard Works
Beyond the works on the main exhibition floor, three additional pieces were placed in the gallery’s backyard.
Book Launch Exhibition
At Morioka Shoten Ginza, a book-launch exhibition was being held for a monograph released alongside the solo show.
Sales of the book appeared to be very strong. A large-format poster was also being sold in a limited edition, and those unable to purchase the paintings themselves were snapping them up instead.
I returned several times during the exhibition run, and each visit brought a lot of young women who don’t usually frequent galleries.
Teppei Takeda has also produced floral works in the past.
What kind of work will he show us next?
It was a truly wonderful exhibition.
