Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to present “Stay Gold,” a solo exhibition of Yosuke Takeda’s photographs. This exhibition, Takeda’s first with Taka Ishii Gallery, will include approximately fourteen of his most representative photographic works made between 2006 and 2014.

To “Stay Gold” is a type of resistance.

To say that “Nothing Gold Can Stay” means that unchanging things do not exist. Still, there is a resistance in taking the side of the stasis of things. For me, this resistance is “photography.”
- Yosuke Takeda

Yosuke Takeda was born in 1982 in Aichi Prefecture, and graduated with a degree in Philosophy from Doshisha University in 2005. While at university, Takeda absorbed himself in darkroom work. However, given the stoppage of photographic paper production and other factors, the conditions for making gelatin silver photographs were becoming more difficult. Takeda realized that it would be impossible to ignore this situation, and this realization was a turning point for him as an artist working with photography. Even while the act of looking at images remains the same, the materials for fixing images are undergoing great changes. In the middle of such changes, what does it mean to work with photography? Takeda has come to face up to this large question, which requires a careful answer.

After moving to digital photography, Takeda produced various works overflowing with a penetrating degree of consciousness towards photography as a medium. These works were well-received, as much for their unique composition as for their flat image surface. We invite you to take this opportunity to observe the development of this artist—who, standing between the fixing of images on paper and the manipulation of digital data on a monitor, is exploring the possibilities of photography.

In conjunction with this exhibit, Super Labo will publish Yosuke Takeda’s first artist book, Stay Gold. We will provide further information on our website and through our mailing list.

From March 26, Yosuke Takeda’s “Stay Gold” will also be exhibited at Kurenboh (Kuramae, Tokyo), TRAUMARIS│SPACE (Ebisu, Tokyo) and Taka Ishii Gallery Modern (Roppongi, Tokyo).

To see the exhibition at TRAUMARIS | SPACE, please click here.

*image (left)
© Yosuke Takeda