EXHIBITIONS
Reika Takebayashi “A petal falling”
Dates: Apr 4 – May 2, 2026
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery Roppongi
Opening reception: Saturday, Apr 4, 17:00 – 19:00
Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to present “A petal falling,” a solo exhibition of the work of Reika Takebayashi, on view from Saturday, April 4 to Saturday, May 2. The exhibition, her second solo show at Taka Ishii Gallery, will feature her latest work, including five paintings.
Takebayashi has consistently sought to reconstruct landscapes from lived experience and present them in new visual forms. Based in Kyoto, she draws on close observation of its rich natural environment, as well as on encounters with local ways of life and history that she has derived from travel and extended stays abroad. Rather than recording a scene superficially from a fixed viewpoint, in the manner of a snapshot, she explores the detail and depth of a place, tuning into a wide range of sensory stimuli, and translates it to the picture plane in a language that moves freely between the figurative and the abstract.
Takebayashi has spoken of her interest in the reproductive structures of lichens and mosses, and in the formation of gravel and sediment. In her work, elements particular to a place are observed with close, microscopic attention and brought onto the canvas with their textures intact. With brushstrokes of varying sizes, she layers thinly diluted paint across the surface, imbuing the image with the atmosphere of the depicted scene and a subtle sense of fluctuation. Color is not confined to a realistic, descriptive role, but serves as a means of anchoring the artist’s lingering impressions. Alternating between viewing the whole and the details, the viewer undergoes a vicarious experience of standing before a landscape with senses fully attuned, processing its many aspects simultaneously, and can trace the process by which the varied stimuli of the natural world find their way into the work.
Takebayashi’s determination to capture phenomena as they occur within an ever-shifting scene draws our attention to the many scales and axes of time that surround us. Rock faces eroded by pounding water over eons of time, petals falling as cells gradually break down: such natural processes unfold beyond the threshold of direct human perception, yet each possesses its own current of time, and Takebayashi’s works are rooted in this understanding. Built through the patient layering of strata, they imply that the act of making art is itself an accumulation of time.
In her ceramic panel works, which she has continued to produce alongside her painting practice, she maintains an experimental concern with form while actively moving in new directions, including placing multiple ceramic pieces together to form larger-scale works. The new works presented in this exhibition incorporate water-based resin and are formed from molds impressed with raised marks, giving them a texture reminiscent of plaster. As malleable clay and fluid resin go through the process of hardening, they convey the image of an artist who approaches her materials in an exploratory, tactile manner, and the work incorporates the resulting ambiguities such as softness and hardness, stability and instability, in gradations that hold both simultaneously.
Reika Takebayashi was born in 1998 in Osaka and lives and works in Kyoto. She graduated in 2020 with a BA (major in oil painting) from Kyoto University of Art and Design, and completed her master’s degree (MFA) in the same field at Kyoto City University of Arts in 2022. Her solo exhibitions include “When we see invisible sea”, Public Gallery, London (2025); “You should care more about butterflies”, Taka Ishii Gallery Maebashi, Gunma (2024); “mtk+ vol.12 Reika Takebayashi”, mtk+, Kyoto (2022); “Vicissitude and Perpetuity”, WALL GALLERY at Kintetsu Department Store Main Store Abeno Harukas, Osaka (2022); and “P/P”, Jodo Fukugoh Window Gallery StandAlone, Kyoto (2020). She has participated in group exhibitions such as “land marks”, Pace Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); “Neck of the wood”, Public Gallery, London (2025); “grid4”, biscuit gallery, Tokyo (2025); “Trees Faraway”, BEAK 585 GALLERY, Osaka (2023); “MtK Satellite vol.2”, MtK satellite, Aichi (2023); and “SHIBUYA STYLE vol.16”, Art Gallery & Alternative Space, Seibu Shibuya, Tokyo (2022).
