ARTIST INTERVIEW

From photographer to contemporary artist: an exclusive interview with TAKAPRINCIPAL.

"It is in an unstable world that creativity is born."

TAKAPRINCIPAL solo exhibition "Unstable Perfection"
<Saturday, November 9, 2024 - Sunday, November 24, 2024>

TAKA PRINCIPAL has been active as a photographer for 30 years, and this year he made his debut as a contemporary artist. We spoke to him about his transition to becoming an artist and his work, as he pursues the essence of analogue expression.

--Shortly after graduating from high school, you started working as a photographer. With your work going well, you moved to New York.

"I started taking photos when I was nine years old, and what I had always sought was the profound perspective and power of the likes of (Richard) Avedon and (Sebastião) Salgado, but to be honest, I rarely felt that in the Japanese commercial photography scene. The work was interesting, but I wanted to know whether what I was looking for was simply a foreign sensibility that Japanese people don't have, or a density or depth of expression, so I decided to just take action."

-What influenced you in New York?

"In New York, I spent a lot of time working as a printer rather than a photographer, but in the dark room I met photographers for Magnum and printing directors who had also worked on portraits of Miles (Davis), and I would often see photographs that made me think, 'I'll never be able to catch up with that,' and it was a shock when they told me, 'Becoming famous through commercial photography is not a big deal. It's not until you're 50 that you'll be able to capture the real things that you've dedicated your life to.'"

-Where did the idea of becoming an artist at 50 come from?

"I think it has to do with the fact that the places I lived after that were all towns that made me think about art, but that education made me think that if I gained a variety of experiences by the time I was about 50, I might be able to do something. At that time, I loved nature, so I wondered if I could live in the great outdoors, and so I went to Alaska for about three months. But hunting and slaughtering cattle was extremely tough, and all I could do was fetch water. I realized that I could only survive in the city, and that leads to the theme of nature and urban energy that I'm working on now."

"It feels the same as when I was in the editorial department of a magazine in the '90s and said, 'It would be fun if we could do something like this,' and did interesting things. My lifestyle has also been like a nomad, looking for places that catch my eye, teaming up with interesting people there to find something interesting, and when that's over, moving on to another place. The transition from photography to art is the same feeling, so for me it hasn't changed."

--What is the difference between the painting you've recently started working on and photography?

"I've always believed that photography is a free thing, and even when I traveled to different places and thought I'd taken some great photos, about 15 years ago I started to feel that when I printed and processed the images, I wasn't free at all! I was in the great outdoors, experiencing these great feelings, and yet all I could take was this? When you photograph natural scenery, of course you can't control it. I think that photography is a method of expression that is limited and restrictive, which is why it's easy for people to empathize with it."

"Since I started painting, I've been examining whether this can be expressed through photography, but there are certainly things in paintings that can't be expressed through photography. I've been doing photography for a long time and thought I'd perfected it, but it made me realize that there is so much freedom in the strokes (painting with a paintbrush). The reason why you can't immediately empathize with art is because of freedom. There is freedom for both the artist and the viewer."

--I found freedom of expression. What do you keep in mind when creating artwork?

"In my mixed media works, I graphically express my primitive concept of what it's like for city dwellers to want to live in the great outdoors. The neon colors and shapes express energy, while in painting I express what's inside me more, so I feel like I can't just think about it for a long time. The things that can be called works are those that can be created in about five minutes or less."

"The reason I set the photographs in resin is to preserve my primitive concepts and current technology. Modern printers and inks improve on a yearly basis, and what in the 1990s required the equivalent of dozens of Macs to be possible is now possible with the lowest-end processors. I believe that preserving for the future the incredible speed of evolution that is occurring in this era and what can be done with it is an important role of art."

--You're still in your first year as an artist, and you've already had group and solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Nagoya, Hong Kong, Thailand, and other places at a rapid pace. The speed of completion is also an important point in your creations.

"I've been working in photography and creative direction for a long time, so I have more ideas than I can run out of. Once I start drawing, I can't stop, so I keep going. My primitive concepts and strokes are starting to match, and I'm producing a huge amount of work every day, easily tens of pieces a day."

"When it comes to photography, since the advent of smartphones, image quality and pixel count are no longer so important, so rather than spending three days retouching skin in Photoshop, I think modern expression is about completing a graphical image in an instant."

--What is the intention behind this exhibition, "Unstable Perfection"?

"I say I love the great outdoors, but I feel like I shouldn't be talking about nature when all I can do is fetch water in Alaska. But being in the city is stressful, so I go out into nature and conveniently take photos of only the good parts. This is a contradictory and unstable state. It's this sense of contradiction that becomes my work. I think it's precisely because of this instability that it leads to creativity."

"When things are stable, you don't have to think about it, but if things stay stable for a long time, I think it's human desire to want to change them. Instability will continue forever, and what you create in that situation is perfect."

TAKA PRINCIPAL believes that art is something that creates passion, and that "art only exists deep inside the individual." In a rapidly changing world, capturing the energy that is generated in an instant is the sensibility of a photographer. His solo exhibition "Unstable Perfection" will be held from November 9th (Sat) to November 24th (Sun).

ABOUT ARTIST

TAKA PRINCIPAL

Born in Aichi Prefecture in 1974. Moved to the United States in 1993. After returning to Japan in 2001, he worked as a photographer under the name TAKA, taking photographs for magazines and advertisements. In parallel with commercial photography, he exhibits his work as a photographer in Japan and abroad, including in Tokyo, New York, London, and Hong Kong. In 2013, he moved to Hong Kong. In 2024, he began working as a contemporary artist under the name TAKA PRINCIPAL.

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