I’ve really enjoyed watching the evolution of Japanese artist Aya Takano. She uses acrylic and diluted gouache paints to create fictional, erotic, and sullen images featuring thin, big-eyed Geisha girls– there’s a taste of sex, sadness, and the future all at once. She has been showing her work all over the place in the past few years, most recently at the MOCA in Lyon, France, and currently at a group show at the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Miami. I’ve heard that she may be expanding her feminized world in the near future, so maybe some men will be popping up in her new works. For now, Aya, along with her cohorts at the Kaikai Kiki Collective, are really setting the bar high in the world of modern Japanese art.