Visual Adventures - Takanori Aiba 's Spatial Aesthetics

 Kazuko Todate (art critic)

 Takanori Aiba (1953- ), who has proposed new ways of creating exciting amusement spaces for people, such as the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum, the Hakone Saint-Exupéry Little Prince Museum, the Kan-Etsu Expressway Yorii Little Prince PA, and Pink Latte, will hold his first solo exhibition.

The exhibition features Aiba's main design drawings from 2003 to the present (2011), as well as models created by Kazuya Murakami based on Aiba's original drawings.

Aiba's original drawings, which begin as pencil sketches and are finished with pens and colored inks, have gained a dazzling brilliance and density over the past six months with the addition of nail enamel and Swarovski crystal decorations. Although all of these are based on fantastical ideas, they never feel like mere fantasies; rather, they evoke a sense of reality, primarily because they are drawn with meticulous detail and without any compromise.

Moreover, while the design drawings themselves are naturally two-dimensional, they are drawn with the sides, back, and all 360 degrees in mind, and sometimes even the interior. Facing a flat sheet of paper, Aiba's gaze freely roams the buildings and spaces, as if tracing a spiral or deliberately wandering into a maze. It is a dynamic gaze that is both "like a bird" and "like the wind."

According to Aiba, the origin of his work lies in Walt Disney and mazes. He is a self-proclaimed Disneyland enthusiast and was once a maze artist. Indeed, his perspective and sense of space, which moves freely between two and three dimensions, are reminiscent of the world of Disney, and his uncompromising attention to detail and bird's-eye view are essential for creating mazes. The design drawings for this project also include grand-scale bird's-eye views, which are typical of Aiba's ability to simultaneously be aware of both the micro and macro aspects.

No matter how you examine the details of the building, it's a space filled with rich stories and anecdotes, where unique characters will emerge. Murakami's model demonstrates that Aiba's world, packed with his spirit of service to the extreme, is actually possible to realize. Murakami, who studied civil engineering, is also a realist who can share Aiba's dreams.

His early models, in particular, at first glance resemble bonsai trees. Bonsai, which attempts to breathe the spirit of majestic nature into a small space, reflects traditional Japanese aesthetics, and this aesthetic can certainly be glimpsed in Aiba's bonsai-style models. However, the density and narrative quality of Aiba's works possess an extraordinary spatiotemporal dimension and detail that differs from the world realized under the physiology and time constraints of a single plant. "Unprecedented reality" created by contemporary spatial creator Takanori Aiba . Welcome to Aiba's world, a "resort for the soul" that liberates the viewer's imagination.