DECORATOR CRAB

Contemporary artist Takehiro Iikawa, who participated in Takamatu’s Artist In Residence program in 2017, exhibits in Takamatsu for the first time in three years. In this exhibition, we display new pieces in his DECORATOR CRAB series (2007-), under the theme of “intercepting perception”. The decorator crab (known in Japanese as mokuzushoi) camouflages itself by attaching surrounding algae and shells all over its body. Applying the present day, bursting with information, to the difficult-to-perceive true state of this crab, Iikawa has reexamined the relationship between people and information. With pieces such as Mr. Kobayashi, the Pink Cat (2016-), which even if you want to photograph, won’t all fit in one picture, Probable Perspective (2019-), which uses ropes to connect objects that seem unrelated to visualize unexpected structures, and Expecting Spectator (2019-), in which viewers push around the walls in front of them to cause new events to occur in a separate space, Iikawa’s work reminds us that the information that surrounds us is only one part of a whole, and that human perception is unreliable. We hope you enjoy this surprise-filled opportunity to rethink perception and information in our daily lives, which we’ve never doubted before.