Ryoko Takahashi | HIKARI

Ryogoku

Ryoko Takahashi "HIKARI"

June 1 (Tue) - June 19 (Sat), 2021

Open : Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 7pm / Closed on Sunday, Monday and National holiday

Viewing Room

GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Ryoko Takahashi entitled “HIKARI” which means light in English.

In this exhibition, Takahashi is going to show collage, drawings, three-dimensional works, and installation used not only human hair but also materials from nature such as cicada shell, fish scales, and plants skins. Takahashi consistently attempts to express the beauty of the material lights and the invisible lights by being aware of the wide perspective. The works include the magnificence and beauty of life that repeats endlessly and the various lights in them.

After she moved to Nemuro, located in Hokkaido Japan in 2015, Takahashi saw the decaying wild animals and the vitality of plants that sprout many times in a harsh environment. Accepting the death of the closed person little by little and seeing the life and death of animals and plants as a natural law, Takahashi could take the first step toward resuming her creation. In this show, Takahashi exhibits her latest works with a strong message. Even though they are more sensitive than before, her works represent the grandeur and beauty of nature that encompass life and death.

Takahashi has produced dresses, embroideries, objects, drawings, and installations with women’s hairs included in herself. Women’s hair represents the symbol of feminine beauty, but on the other hand, it has changed into the symbol of death from the moment the hair was cut. Creating feminine objects with the symbolic material, Takahashi succeeds in bringing back the beautiful and sensitive elements to the hair and serving ambiguities; life and death; beauty and ugliness. The ambiguities might give the viewers ambivalent feelings as soon as they realized her works are made with human hairs.

Some people might purely see them as beautiful and delicate works in isolation from gender, Auschwitz, and even hair. In the process of creating and resenting hairs as art works, Takahashi shows her strong thoughts and delicate aesthetic sense in the simple objects.

Ryoko Takahashi was born in Osaka, in 1980 and graduated from Kyoto Seika University. She has previously exhibited at the French embassy in 2009, at Gunma Seinen Biennale in 2010, and at Australia in 2013. Also, her video work was a part of a group show by Alfa Romeo at spiral in Tokyo. Although she had shown a wide range of accomplishments, Takahashi kept a distance from her art activity due to facing a closed person's sudden death in a few years. She slowly restarts to create her delicate artworks to describe life and death.

Artist comment

"HIKARI"

We are alive while emitting light

What spills from your body is a piece of light

Traces of life

Before everything disappears

Turn prayer into light again

Like a shooting star draws a beautiful line

Ryoko Takahashi, 2021

[Brief Chronology]

1980　Born in Osaka,Japan

2004　B.F.A., Kyoto Seika University Faculty of Art