EXHIBITIONS
Takashi Ishida “From Purple, a Tableau Begins”
Dates: May 11 – Jun 22, 2025
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery Maebashi
Opening reception: Sunday, May 11, 13:30 – 17:30
Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to present “From Purple, a Tableau Begins”, a solo exhibition by Takashi Ishida. Ishida’s first solo show at Taka Ishii Gallery Maebashi will be held in parallel with his large-scale exhibition “Between Tableau and Window” at Arts Maebashi (April 19 – June 22, 2025). The exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery will feature Ishida’s latest works, as well as works produced during his recent visit to Maebashi, all on view for the first time.
This winter, I began painting purple rectangles, from which small spirals and rising forms emerged. The process started with the purple rectangle and eventually returned to it, while along the way, various colors appeared outside its borders. As I repeatedly followed this organically developed rule, I was reminded of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which characters pass through rooms bathed in different colors. Many of Poe’s works depict chaotic scenes in which frames and lines of sight are misaligned, and they never fail to astonish me. The castle in this short story is like a camera obscura that has captured a rainbow, yearning for the outside world yet already containing all its light within. At some point, I realized that my purple rectangle must simultaneously serve as the first room, a window, and ultimately a door to the final room. In his essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe writes that he began the poem “The Raven” by composing its ending. But what kind of artwork moves toward its conclusion while simultaneously beginning from the end? A certain painter once said he wanted to create images that were in the same realm as an untouched, completely blank canvas—impossible, and perhaps that very impossibility is painting’s most essential principle. Still, I found myself painting a purple rectangle at a point just before reaching that state.
Takashi Ishida
In the process of producing and presenting new work in Maebashi, the birthplace of the writer Sakutaro Hagiwara, Ishida says that he gave deep thought to what exists in the realm between “painting” and “poetry.” The works in this exhibition, created while reflecting on both Poe and Hagiwara – who greatly admired Poe – trace the metamorphosis of color while exploring new approaches to the beginnings and endings in painting. In the works of both authors, color produces symbolic and psychological effects, and is used to blur the boundary between reality and illusion. Among them, blue, purple, red, and black are particularly resonant, intertwining with themes of dreams and solitude and serving as guideposts in a poetic and otherworldly fictional space.
Ishida’s earlier work explored the concept of time through the acts of painting and drawing. Referencing the Lumière brothers’ short film “Demolition of a Wall”, he incorporated reverse motion techniques into his drawing animations, creating works in which the beginning and end converge. However, while such reversals of time are achievable in moving images, they cannot be replicated in painting. With this in mind, for this exhibition Ishida has adopted a new approach, focusing on a cyclical structure that returns to the painting’s point of origin. For an artist who has often worked with blue as a dominant tone, beginning instead with purple as the source of an unfolding spectrum of colors also posed a fresh challenge. Echoing the vivid chromatic imagery in the poetry of Poe and Hagiwara, the purple rectangles, enveloped in layers of color and time, invite viewers to venture into the depths of the images.
Takashi Ishida is a painter and film artist born in 1972 in Tokyo. He is also a professor at Tama Art University. He uses a technique of drawing animation, which consists in drawing lines and shooting them one frame at a time. By interposing multiplying lines, moving points or some other mobile element, Ishida’s installations produce changes in the quality of the space. His recent major exhibitions include “Between Tableau and Window”, The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama (2024); “ISHIDA Takashi”, Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum (2020); “Light on the Arc”, the Aomori Contemporary Art Center (2019); Sharjah Biennial 13, “Tamawuj” (2017); Aichi Triennale 2016 and Kenpoku Art 2016 (both 2016); “Billowing Light: ISHIDA Takashi”, the Yokohama Museum of Art / the Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum (2015); Dojima River Biennale, “Little Water”, Osaka (2013); “Double Vision: Contemporary Art from Japan”, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art / Haifa Museum of Art (2012); MOT Collection “Silent Narrator: On Plural Stories [Special Feature] Takashi Ishida”, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2011); “Artist File 2010: The NACT Annual Show of Contemporary Art”, The National Art Center Tokyo (2010); Meditations Biennale, “Beyond Meditations”, Poznan, Poland (2010). He received the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s 75th Art Encouragement Prize in 2025 and the Most Promising Young Talent Prize of the Gotoh Cultural Award in 2007. His work “Gestalt” won the Award for Excellence at Image Forum Festival 1999.
