TALION GALLERY

EUSKE OIWA AND TAKEHIRO IIKAWA: THE BLUE SKY, THE COUNT OF TEN

This two-person exhibition will showcase a selection of new works by Euske Oiwa and Takehiro Iikawa. Oiwa, who received his PhD from Tokyo University of the Arts, has a keen interest in the philosophical genealogy of installation art. He creates meticulously constructed multimedia installations inspired by a wide range of themes, from the spatiotemporal experiences of isolation in a pandemic society to the playability created by games. Oiwa’s ambitious work Card Game (2022) focuses on our capacity for inference and conviction, while his first museum exhibition “P in Case” (2022) took as its subject our paranoia regarding contemporary life as an intelligent mechanism. Iikawa, on the other hand, is known for his Decorator Crab—Mr. Kobayashi, the Pink Cat (2007–) sculptures of giant, fluorescent pink cats. Inspired by the information overload of contemporary life, which frustrates attempts to obtain a full picture or complete account of any particular event, Iikawa’s pink cats are so big they can never be captured in a single photo. Behind the absurdity of this gigantic animal is a comment on the futility of accurate documentation in an age of the instant transmission of images and information over the internet and social media.