Now, with the curtain to his painting career officially lifted, Takahashi is embracing a new chapter and seeking to cement a legacy in a medium that has quietly consumed his downtime for many years. His inaugural exhibition was an extension of that youthful passion, but it’s a practice that he’s refined over the past decade while moonlighting outside his design work. “Since I was a child, I used to draw and doodle whenever I had free time,” he tells us. Those close to the designer, however, have long known of his affinity for the arts. Takahashi was not formally known as a studio artist until recently most would identify him as the Japanese streetwear pioneer behind UNDERCOVER, the insurgent brand he founded over 30 years ago. This was the opening for Jun Takahashi’s first-ever solo exhibition, THEY CAN SEE MORE THAN YOU CAN SEE, and each piece was sold, well, in the blink of an eye. Revered Japanese musicians Utada Hikaru and Yumi Matsutoya lent their idiosyncratic vocals to the room, while the eyeless portraits left those with pupils intrigued. Aside from one portrait that noticeably resembled David Bowie (the subject’s tall coiffed hair giving strong clues), the canvases maintained their ambiguity, even as onlookers moved closer to the frame. Its walls were adorned with 26 enigmatic oil paintings depicting canonical characters from literature and pop culture, all of whom were indistinguishable due to the absence of their usual starry eyes. This past August, Tokyo’s GALLERY TARGET adopted a distinct, punkish aura. This article originally appeared as the cover story of ‘Hypebeast Magazine Issue 32: The Fever Issue.’ Please visit HBX to grab your copy.
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