Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to present “Burning Chair,” a solo exhibition by Takashi Ishida commemorating his reception of the Gotoh Cultural Award Fine Arts Division. This exhibit, which is Ishida’s second solo exhibition to be held at Taka Ishii Gallery, is jointly hosted with the Gotoh Memorial Foundation. “Burning Chair,” Ishida’s most recent work, was created by shooting one frame at a time to produce a “moving image” of drawing animation, in which a natural line propagates itself like a wave. For this work, Ishida drew on a wall and floor made of concrete with chalk, then sprinkled water over his drawing to erase the chalk lines. The water dried out and disappeared, creating a repetitious image; the use of such malleable materials on concrete surfaces only emphasizes the image’s generation and disappearance. This work functions as the complement of “Reflection,” which Ishida created while staying in Canada and England through a grant from the Gotoh Memorial Foundation. “Reflection” was produced from uncontrollable natural light rather than artificial studio light, and in this way functions as a new venture into documentary.

Up until now, Ishida had mostly used paint to create drawing animation works like “Gestalt” (1999), “CHAIR/SCREEN” (2003), “Wall of the Sea,” “Film of the Sea” (both 2007), made in public at the Yokohama Museum of Art), “Reflection” (2009) and “A White Room” (2012). This exhibition marks the first time he has used chalk in his work. With respect to the act of drawing with water, “Burning Chair” could be seen as the evolution of works like “Drawing on the Sand” (2011), a documentary work created on an Okinawan Beach which was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and “Summer Drawing” (2010), which Ishida drew on a concrete surface in high heat. This exhibit will also comprise highly experimental new drawings which were created by transmitting light onto manuscript paper.

Among my works up to now, I feel that “Burning Chair” has come the closest to the territory of dreams. If “Reflection” is a painting of daytime, then I think “Burning Chair” is a painting of night.
- Takashi Ishida

Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery