Solo Exhibition
MIREI TAKEUCHI
June 6 – 29, 2024
Opening reception on June 15 from 1 to 5pm in the presence of the artist
Discover her wonderful work by clicking on this link : Mirei Takeuchi
Montréal, May 30, 2024 – This new exhibition completes the gallery’s spring program. We are delighted to welcome German-Japanese artist Mirei Takeuchi for the first time. The exhibition features works from different periods, from her studies at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Professor and artist Otto Kunzli to the present day.
Born in Porz-Wahn, Germany, in 1969, Mirei Takeuchi studied product design at Kyoritsu Joshi University in Tokyo from 1987 to 1991. She then worked as an interior designer until 1995, when she became an assistant at the same university. In 2000, back in Germany as a visiting student at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hidesheim for a year, she decided to continue her studies in jewelry at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Otto Kunzli. She obtained her Master’s degree in 2010, and her work won the Bavarian National Award and the prestigious Herbert-Hofman Prize in 2011. Many of her pieces can be found in numerous private and public collections, including The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The Sammlung Danner-Stiftung Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Munchner Stadtmuseum, Munich, and Museum Kolumba, Cologne.
At first glance, Takeuchi’s works seem simply delicate and fragile. Yet each of the collections presented in this exhibition demands special attention. Underneath an extremely subtle, minimalist style, the necklaces in the Needle series, 2004, contain a sharpness, an intervention by the artist to break the rhythm of the circle. In 2005, in memory of her grandmother’s words, Takeuchi created the Hidden Pearls series, to underline the importance of living, through the metaphor of wrapping oneself in fine silk to bring out the beauty of one’s being. The pearls reveal themselves through the silk. The ennoblement of an everyday material is often present in contemporary jewelry. These tasteless polyester fabrics and tablecloths, imitating lace and knitwear, are diverted from their primary function. Assigned to protect the table, in the artist’s hands they become surprisingly delicate ornaments in the series Lace created in 2007 and question the consideration and the perception of traditional crafts.
The next collections are undoubtedly better known, Butterfly and Dragonfly.
‘A butterfly with torn wings
Flies on and on
Gradually losing its balance
A dragonfly wing found on the road
Where is its owner?
These transient souls have the eternal power of beauty
Enchanting the mind’
Mirei Takeuchi
The jewelry from the Dragonfly collection evokes the delicacy of dragonfly or cicada wings, fragile yet elegant forms. They capture their ephemeral beauty and vulnerability, which she paradoxically transposes into laser-cut steel, a metal renowned for its strength and solidity.
In a similar evocation of the insecurity and fragility of our times, Mirei’s magnificent butterflies are all black, cut from steel and partially covered with a lustrous resin. A symbol of beauty and lightness, they bear witness to an era.
In a completely different register, the artist’s most recent creations, gathered under the title The Embroidered Word, consist of philosophical reflections. She chooses embroidery to ‘write’ her words, Der Anfang und Das Ende (the beginning and the end), or geben und nehmen (give and take), repeated almost ad infinitum, these words having become necklaces. Ichbinichbinichbin… I am, I am, I am, I am… this embroidered bracelet questions our self, our duality of being, our perpetual questioning.
This exhibition offers an opportunity to meet an artist with an exceptional and sensitive career. Each of the collections invites us to reflect, to ask questions that are still relevant today.
For more information
Noel Guyomarc’h [email protected]
514 -8409362
