Aya Takano’s “how deep how far we can go” solo exhibition opens at Perrotin Los Angeles

Los Angeles, in AYA TAKANO’s world, feels like a distant echo: less asphalt and sunburnt sprawl, more fevered whispers filtered through vapor. For her eleventh solo exhibition with Perrotin, she returns with a new body of work that resists gravity: elongated, weightless figures slide across multi-paneled canvases, their limbs bending across frames like they’re slipping between dimensions. Her near-impressionist brushwork is where she grounds her elusive characters, constructing evocations of Osamu Tezuka’s mythological Phoenix; Buddhist-style reincarnation and the pursuit of immortality intertwine with a fleshy, coming-of-age search for identity. 

TAKANO’s characters—part-girl, part-creature, part-thought—carry the same fragility as ever, their glassy eyes reflecting not just their mischievous surroundings, but our own desire to make sense of them. A wiry figure with dragonfly wings perches on a seed-pod-shaped canvas, somewhere between spirit guide and manga hallucination. Around her, soft beings—almost embryonic—pullulate and dissolve into backgrounds that hum with pastel unease.

Set against the recent LA wildfires, another layer of TAKANO’s work is unearthed, hope bleeding out from an unknown universe. The works feel less painted than dreamed, as if TAKANO’s world is only visible when the real one loosens its grip.  

On view until August 29th

Words by Julia Silverberg