Koji Takei

Hand in Hand

2012

Creating sculptures of exquisite peculiarity is an art in which Takei excels. His elegantly crafted works embody the notion of the whimsical, contradictory and idiosyncratic. There is an immediately detectable sense of humor and quick wit about the sculptures in this exhibition. Beyond playfulness, however, Takei’s aim is to challenge the viewer to alter the way in which they look at reality. Taking cues from the Surrealists of the early 20th century, Takei transforms the mundane into the fantastic - and sometimes absurd. His work is a constant inquiry into the meaning of functionality and the perception of purpose. Much like Man Ray’s iconic readymade sculpture, The Gift (1921), and Meret Oppenheim’s infamous fur-covered teacup (Object, 1936), Takei recontextualizes those pragmatic objects that we immediately recognize. With his piece Soft Shoulders (2011), Takei deconstructs a wooden clothes hanger...

Koji Takei works reference synthetic cubism in the most literal of senses. In cubist artworks, the objects are broken up, analyzed and re-assembled in abstracted form. These pieces...

Wall sculpture “It has long been known that the Earth is round, but it is only now in the space age that it is really seen to be so. The stunning pictures of the blue planet floatin...

The title of Benjamin Heller’s group of sculptures, “Inner Tidal” refers to an “Intertidal Zone”, which is the edge of an ecosystem that is alternately above and below the waterline ...