Introduction

Rieko Otake creates wood sculpture mainly using camphor wood, and leaves them unpainted. Her works often look delicate and somehow unsettled, but also possess originality, strength, and great depth. Forms and textures of her sculptural works draw out mysteriousness from the materiality of a simple material such as wood, and imply stories with rich lyricism.
In the previous exhibition “Tori Tori” at Tomio Koyama Gallery last year, Otake presented the motif of bird, which she states that she will continue producing, along with her main motif of girl. These birds seem to fly with our imagination on their wings. By seeing them, we feel the sincerity of the artist toward wood sculpture as her expression, and also are tempted to imagine the ways in which the materiality turns into images with limitless possibilities.

Concept

Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyoto is pleased to present Rieko Otake’s solo exhibition “Dreamlike”, which mainly features 2 different sized sets of installations of large and small girls. The title “Dreamlike” denotes the world that can be seen only through the images and forms of her works, and it transcends the boundary between “dream” and “reality”. The exhibition includes 6 to 7 works of wood sculpture, mainly of camphor wood and some Japanese nutmeg wood.

Artist Biography

Rieko Otake was born in 1978 in Kanagawa prefecture. She graduated from the Sculpture Department of Tokyo University of the Arts in 2002, received her Master’s in 2002, and also completed her PhD in 2007. She currently lives and works in Kanagawa.
Her accomplishments over the years have included the nomination for the The 9th Taro Okamoto Memorial Award for Contemporary Art in 2005. Her works, along with those by Motohiko Odani and Koji Tanada, among others, were exhibited at The Chinretsukan Gallery of The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts in 2007 at the exhibition “Sculpture from Stories.” This year, her works were exhibited in the exhibition “SCULPTURE- Blues & Low Blow” at the same venue. This is the second solo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery since last year.