Daichi Takagi: Suchness

David Zwirner is pleased to announce Suchness, an exhibition of new paintings by Japanese artist Daichi Takagi (b. 1982), on view in The Upper Room at the gallery’s London location. Blurring the boundary between figuration and abstraction, Takagi’s recent work is introspective and reflective, focusing on phenomena observable in his everyday environment. Motifs such as trees, stones, rain, and the moon recur across compositions, alluding to the natural world but more powerfully to the fleeting nature of perception.

As Takagi describes, his practice begins with seeing and perceiving objects as pure experience. In his work, boundaries between subject and object, inside and outside, are not fully resolved, and the world emerges as a raw and immediate presence. The exhibition’s title, Suchness (真如), refers to a state in which things simply are as they are. Rather than interpreting or controlling his subjects, Takagi attempts to give form to their presence, the space that arises around them, and the essence of experience. Underlying this approach is an affinity with modern Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida’s notion of “pure experience,” as well as Eastern philosophical ideas of non-duality in which the divisions between self and world are understood as fluid rather than fixed.

Born in Gifu, Japan, Takagi received his BFA and MFA from Tama Art University, Tokyo. The artist lives and works in Kanagawa.