The Christopher Cutts Gallery is pleased to announce our 4th solo exhibition by Toronto / Tokyo-based artist Daisuke Takeya, titled Breaking the Waves. The exhibition consists of his signature large-scale landscape paintings with vast sky from the Kara series (“Kara” means “empty” in Japanese, and symbolises the word for sky, “Sora” when written in Kanji Character), as well as life-sized figure paintings. The title of the exhibition, Breaking the Waves, is taken from the 1996 film directed by Lars von Trier, winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and starring Emily Watson. Breaking the Waves is a traumatic story of love, life, and death, and echoes Daisuke’s artistic endeavours of the last five years since the tsunami disaster caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011.
Daisuke has worked on numerous projects since the disaster in support of its survivors. In Toronto he collaborated with artists from various genres to create ASHITA: Artists for Japan (co-directed with Rafi Ghanaghounian), and exhibited GOD loves Japan, an installation at MOCCA (MOCA). He then travelled through Asia to further promote the support of tsunami victims with Daichi Projects, Field Trip Project, Field Trip Project Asia, and Fukushima NO ALICE. These projects have all been in continuation since the incident, and together serve to illustrate how the artist’s practise has evolved from a solitary painting practise to a more socially aware one.
The feature work of Breaking the Waves is an altarpiece. Daisuke has Combined neon signage, Kara painting, figurative painting, debris collected from disaster sites in Japan, and soil from Canada. Elements in this work are life-sized and hyper-realistic, while others are heavily textured, multi-layered and abstract. In its diversity this work is a triumph. The exhibition also includes portraits of a Lolita girl from Fukushima, as well as Canadian indie music icon Clara Venice, pictured in a bubbly pop underwater scene. Also showing are several paintings from the Kara series, depicting Toronto, Niagara Falls, rural Fukushima, the South China Sea, Jomon, the oldest known civilization of Japan; Gaylang, Singapore’s red light district and Okawa Elementary School, infamous for the tragic loss of 70 of the 108 students and 9 of the 13 teachers and staff.

opening reception : Thursday December 8th, 6-9 pm