White Dog

Known for her own pictorial language with its unique sense of kawaii and lolicon imagery, Aya Takano here in White Dog (Lot 457) further distinguishes herself from her peers of the art style dubbed "Tokyo Pop" or "Superflat" by producing a three-dimensional representation of her constructed fantastical otherworlds. Exhibited in 2007 alongside the large-scale painting featured in the Evening Sale, The Wind Came. The Vast Sky Was a Light Blue. She Sees a World that Envelopes the Entire Stratosphere, White Dog is a play on scale and perception. Takano juxtaposes the white dog that is supposedly endearing in its innocence and pureness, with underlying violence and the ironic perversity of the dog chewing on a blue bird. As in her paintings, we are kept under the optimistic illusion that we never age and can preserve our youthful, adventurous spirit forever. But here, most importantly, we are consciously jolted into Takano's coy play of purity and corruption, child and adult, fantasy and reality all at once.