Polar concepts, such as center and periphery, or front and back, are keywords to interpret the works 

by Takanori Suga. He positions luxury brand’s logos, characters, or a canvas of a painting as front-sided structures, and various motifs collected on a street, such as peeled stickers, shapes of splashed liquid, cow bones found on a road while wandering Australia, even a dilapidated abandoned house, as back-sided that contain abundant possibilities. His attitude of using the “marginal” objects as non-standard canvases, while applying non-standard motifs to standard canvases, shows his intention to stir up the two opposite concepts, which are front and back, center and periphery.

 

Suga's paintings are rather composed of prepared multiple steps, in contrast to its impression seemingly made of instantaneous gestures. Motifs are collected on a street, abstracted and projected on canvases of his own selection, then, carefully traced and outlined by the artist’s hand. His works, appeared as an accumulation of instant actions at a glance, are based on meticulous calculations as well as elaborated depictions, deploy a unique language of expression connecting to the opposite nature of a street art approach.

 

As Suga himself claims that he is rather in the lineage of painters, the influence he has had from his pioneers is immeasurable: NATSUYUKI NAKANISHI, whose paintings evoke an incessant change of ground and figure, Saburo MURAKAMI and his "KAMIYABURI" as an instant action, and Lucio FONTANA, cutting up his canvas. Otherwise, the artist also places importance on more peripheral approaches away from an orthodox, historical art method, including the ethnography.

 

Enchanted by mythologies telling the cycle of death and life, such as Ainu custom of burying bears, or Aboriginal folklore, Suga expresses the purpose of his own paintings as “to paint Klein vase whose front and back are connected”. Painting for him has a similar meaning to the rituals of the Aboriginal or the Ainu peoples. He connects life and death, front and back, creating a path of eternal circulation among them. Through inserting white dripping liquid shape into sceneries of the former Kyoto Prefectural Office, or Choshi City, Chiba Prefecture, or applying a pattern of Miu Miu’s brand shop’s wallpaper to his late grandmother's kimono, Suga has been realized such an intention in a variety of practices peculiar to him.

 

Dripping or scratching canvases with marginalized motifs - which are affiliated with the back - the artist also uses cow bones’ canvas on which he applies luxury brand’s logos, or iconographies of well-known characters, to reverse and connect front and back. The works by Takanori Suga, heir of Aboriginal mythology, assuming the qualities to bring balance to the world, suggest the constant circulation of polar concepts, lead the viewer on a journey in-between. 

 

Nayo Higashide (Independent curator)