Dates: Jul 15 – Sep 3, 2023
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery Maebashi
Opening reception: Saturday, Jul 15, 17:30 – 19:30

*Conversation: Kei Takemura x Atsushi Shinfuji
Date and time: Saturday, Aug 19, 17:30 – 19:00
By reservation only (capacity: 30)
Book here

Taka Ishii Gallery Maebashi is pleased to present Kei Takemura’s solo exhibition, “floating light, fleeting color” from Saturday, July 15 to Sunday, September 3. This solo show will feature 10 of her latest works, including those using fluorescent silk thread, a material that she has been engaging with in recent years.

The “Renovated Series” made with fluorescent silk, which is on exhibit in Hiroshima, must be illuminated with a blue LED light in order for the thread to glow. However, much like a slow burning candle, the glow eventually diminishes due to continued exposure to light. The exhibition took place over a duration of three months, so every month or so I would go and add more glow to the works, but each time it was obvious that the parts where the blue light had directly hit had lost its glow. While threads that maintain their glow are a slight green color, those that have lost their luminescence are pure white, as if their life has come to an end. Since I stitched on some more fluorescent thread to these whitened areas, the embroidery became thicker in places that were well illuminated.

The world outside the window appeared to grow light with the break of dawn, and when I turned around, I found that the sky was the same color as the thread I was stitching with.

As it becomes warmer, the flowers decorating the family altar droop their heads within mere days. I take the few that are still in good health and display them upon the windowsill. This week, a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums brighten up the north-facing windowsill.

No sooner than it stopped raining, I noticed that the yellow flowers I thought had just bloomed the other day, were already past their prime. What I could see instead were the delicate white buds of hydrangeas. My mother’s hydrangeas were green when I first planted them, but now they have turned into a mixture of pink and purple hues. The leaves of the evergreen I brought with me from my parents’ house in Tokyo had turned red at first, making me think that there was no hope in salvaging it. However, two years later, its leaves are now verdant and full of life.

Birds often come to pick at the mulberries. Once they have eaten all of the fruit, the leaves are imbued with the color of their juices. Every morning and evening, I pick leaves and feed them to Shin Koishimaru and Gunma Kogane silkworms, which I obtained from the Sericulture Science Center. It amuses me to sew along to the sounds of them eating away at the leaves at unbelievable speed.

Perhaps as a result of last night’s full moon, the Shin Koishimaru silkworms all turned up towards the sky and started swaying from side to side as if drawing a figure eight. This is a sign of them wanting to spin their cocoon, so I made a thin, long tube for each and placed them inside one by one.

The Gunma Kogane silkworms, which didn’t seem to have much of an appetite, began eating at a tremendous rate after the full moon, growing large and plump.

Last night, the last silkworm started spinning its cocoon. The cocoon that the Shin Koishimaru silkworm created was pure white in all its perfection.

Kei Takemura

Now that the world has started to regain its momentum following a period of silence, the luster of each and every stitch that constitute Takemura’s work, along with their metamorphic qualities, seem to reflect the grief and anxiety that coexists with the sense of overflowing joy. Like atoms that have been around for thousands of years traveling through the universe, coming from a place that no longer exists and heading to a place that perhaps no one knows about, through the encounter between silkworms and bioluminescent jellyfish, the artist encourages us to turn our eyes to the semblance our world that surrounds us every day. We invite viewers to take this opportunity to witness the light that float between waves of time, and the world of fleeting colors created by light.

Press Release Download

• 
• 
•