ARTIST

Banri Takada

Born in the United States, he developed an interest in art from an early age, growing up playing in the garden of the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. During his high school years in Hawaii, he encountered Karen Lucas, a sculptor and art therapist, and went on to study under her. Drawing on his experiences in both Japan and the United States, he is currently studying and creating work at Otis College of Art and Design, where he continues to forge new connections.

Artist Statement
In the works of this exhibition, Mount Fuji appears to me not merely as a landscape, but as a presence that allows me to confront myself. Showing a completely different face depending on place, time, and my state of mind, this mountain is not only an outer landscape but also a kind of mirror reflecting my inner world. While I have long woven my own perception into my work by exaggerating the shapes, colors, and overall form of clouds and mountains, this body of work takes a further step — attempting an expression more fundamentally connected to my emotions and inner state. Even in the same place, the scenery I perceive when I am calm and quiet is vastly different from what I see when my heart feels warm and full. What I am striving for is to bring such a difference in the way of appearing itself more powerfully and deliberately onto the canvas.

Going forward, I intend to expand my perspective beyond Mount Fuji to encompass the scenes and moments of everyday life that subconsciously synchronize with my inner state. Whether the streetscape of a familiar neighborhood, images stirred by music, or the particular atmosphere that inhabits a place or event — I hope to express what naturally resonates with my spirit more directly and honestly, sometimes with drama, sometimes with intensity. The works in this exhibition mark a starting point: not a reproduction of what the eye sees, but an attempt to render the way of appearing itself transformed through the inner self.

On the other hand, the portraits made in the early phase of this project take as their subject people who have shaped who I am. If landscape is a mirror that reflects one’s inner world, then the people in these portraits are the forces that formed it. Though they exist as others outside of me, they are at the same time deeply bound up with who I am on the inside. Through these two subjects — landscape and portraiture — I move back and forth between inner world and outer world, exploring the question of how I, as a person, have come to be.