Kazuyuki Takezaki was born in 1976 in Kochi Prefecture, Japan. He received his BA from Kochi University in 1999; following graduation,Takezaki relocated to Tokyo to continue his art practice. In addition to this, his second solo exhibition with MISAKO & ROSEN, Takezaki’s work was featured in VOCA – Vison of Contemporary Art – presented at The Ueno Royal Museum (2010) and is presently on view at the Vangi Sculpture Museum, Shizuoka, Japan as part of a series of related exhibitions which consider the work of Hiroshige and the Tokaido region within a contemporary context.

For his exhibition with MISAKO & ROSEN, “Tokaido : The New Landscape Part II” Takezaki follows a process similar to that which informed his work on view at the Vangi Musuem. Rather than presenting a straightforward re-presentation of Shizuoka landscapes (e.g., Amagi, Mishima, Mariko) which he viewed during travels in preparation for painting, Takezaki utilized multiple first-hand sense experiences of these and other thematically unrelated landscapes. The resulting works bear a considered relationship to the famed 53 woodcut prints of Hiroshige, which picture the Tokaido or “Eastern Sea Road”, yet are meant to both continue and expand upon the possibility of the landscape, hence Takezaki’s numbering syetem which begins with 54.

A formal development in these works is Takezaki’s contolled use of the cut-up; unconcerned with the presentation of multiple vantage points of the same viewed landscape, Takezaki rather attempts to present a collage of the senses and a singular image which bears the trace of multiple places whose existence remain insepperable from the pictured landscape;Takezaki descripes this process as one of multiplication in contrast to an additive approach. Another key element is Takezaki’s installation based expansion of painting; in both the Vangi and MISAKO & ROSEN exhbitions, he has built make-shift structures suitable for temporary inhabitation and consideration. These transitory spaces are composed from objects encountered in the actual experience of the represented landscape. Realzing the continued possibilites in considering Tokaido, Takezaki has created for the MISAKO & ROSEN exhibition new works which picture the sites of Miho and Yui (both Shizuoka City) and Senbonhama and Heda (both Numazu city) – and while the Vangi works drew upon on water as a primary thematic, the present installation abstractly considers an elemental sky and light.

On view
Tokaido, The new landscape : Yamaguchi Akira / Takezaki Kazuyuki
Until August 30, 2011
The Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum (Mishima Shizuoka)
http://www.vangi-museum.jp/kikaku/110424.html