Galerie Perrotin

Last weekend I was put on to this perfect artspace, the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin , where Japanese artist Aya Takano is currently displaying her latest body of work "Wild dogs, hawks, owls, cats, a landfill the size of 44 and half Tokyo Domes, the stratosphere" I'm no art critic, but I do have a soft spot for work coming from the Japanese. Perhaps it is the way kawaii culture is twisted into something darker, an exposition of why "cuteness" is so big in Japan. Their fascination with the fantasy world, their distortion of bodily proportions, all this desire to escape the real is portrayed with fine art which at first glance is nothing more than oversized manga. Takano manages to maintain a clearly Japanese demeanor in ther work, however the girls in her paintings are completely contrary to the curvaceous, double-D, blue-haired women so popular in manga. Her girls are square, flat-chested, yet sill vulnerable and discretely sexual.