L.L. Contemporary is excited to present Difference, a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Takuya Inoue. This marks Inoue’s first solo exhibition in Canada and his third presentation with the gallery. The exhibition features works created during his recent residency at Centre d’art et de diffusion CLARK in Montreal, a cross-cultural program organized in collaboration with Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ).

A statement from the artist appears below:

The works shown in this exhibition, “Difference,” are paintings developed alongside a research project I conducted during an artist residency in Montreal. When I first visited Canada from Japan last year, I became deeply interested in the diversity of people and cultures. Japan has historically been a socially homogeneous society, and what I saw in Montreal was the complete opposite. Within the context of my recent and ongoing theme of “human universality,” I realized the need to reexamine this perception. This is because, in such a diverse society, my perspective itself could be perceived as a form of violence. In other words, presenting a single perspective can unconsciously exclude other perspectives.

The act of making art is a continuous process of selection—how to choose materials, colors, and composition. Especially in painting, there is a power in presenting a single perspective within the frame of a rectangle. In contemporary art, where the meaning of a work and its message to others are placed at the center, how I perceive the world and how I present that viewpoint to others becomes important. But at the same time, there is the risk of unconsciously excluding all other perspectives. I came to deeply realize that my works until now had been cutting off such “unseen worlds.”

That said, it is also true that this perspective of mine is rooted in the cultural background of Japan. The traditional Japanese values based on ideas such as universal harmony, wa (harmony), ma (the space in between), and wabi-sabi, are grounded in an attitude of trying to capture the essence of things and the invisible by eliminating elements. Because of this, I had also tried to understand others from that perspective. However, by encountering diverse values in Canada, I realized that such minimalist expression may in fact exclude the actual, existing perspectives of others. I had not understood that when different values coexist, conflict, contradiction, and misunderstanding inevitably arise. It was only after coming to this country that I learned such conditions are actually more common.

At the same time, I also learned the importance of dialogue—of facing and attempting to understand the perspectives of others. In the art project “ABC,” which I conducted in Montreal this past spring, I asked participants to create a color by mixing what they imagine as “skin color.” That act became an opportunity for them to speak about their roots, cultural memories, and values. The paint born in that process was not made from my own perspective, but rather, created from the perspectives of others. Through those colors, I received something that had been invisible to me.

In this way, the wavering of my own perspective came to form the core of this new series. I reinterpreted painting as “a medium that weaves in relationships with others,” and instead of determining everything on my own in the process of creation, I incorporated dialogue and participation with others as indispensable elements of the work. As a result, not only what is visible on the surface, but also invisible relationships, time, and traces of thinking that have accumulated appear within the work. The colors created by others, and the fluctuation of my own viewpoint in response to them, are directly reflected in the paintings.

Through this process, several questions arose. For whom are the limited elements of expression distributed? Who is pleased by them, and who is left behind? What are we overlooking in exchange for pursuing beauty and ideals? Within the frame of a painting, countless unseen things are tangled together and coexist while contradicting each other. Who is healed, and who is hurt, by these choices? In the same way, in this world, far more than what is visible, complex and contradictory realities intersect and coexist. These paintings are not an attempt to show “what I see,” but rather, an attempt to question “what I do not see.”

Takuya Inoue’s (b. 1993, Japan) painting practice is grounded in his encounters with diverse landscapes and people through residencies and site-specific projects. Using both traditional and experimental techniques, Inoue explores how these experiences can be perceived and transformed into works that align with the concept of “universal harmony” (Banbutsu no chowa). Rooted in Japanese aesthetics, this concept points to the interconnectedness of all things. After completing his graduate studies at Tokyo University of the Arts (2021), Inoue has participated in exhibitions and artist residencies across Asia, Europe, and North America, and has received support from multiple Japanese cultural grant programs. Most recently, during a residency at Centre CLARK in Montreal, Canada (2025), he conceived the project “ABC,” which addresses the challenge of coexistence in a culturally homogeneous society like Japan. Since then, he has been developing a new series of paintings centered on dialogue and collaboration, signaling a shift from a purely subjective approach to one that embraces a more open and relational mode of perception.