What Happened
Japanese-born artist Kojiro Takakuwa is exhibiting Agua de Luz at the Mateo Sariel gallery in Panama. The series presents everyday portraits of his family in Panama’s public pools — notably Parque Omar and Albrook — and has attracted attention after Takakuwa won awards such as the Shell Art Award, the Concurso de Artes Visuales Roberto Lewis and a scholarship from the Sato Museum of Art in Japan.
Background
Takakuwa was born in Yokohama to designer parents and studied English literature at Meiji Gakuin University before working in public relations. He later returned to study art at the University of Tsukuba, completing doctoral work researching ‘poiética,’ a field within aesthetics that examines the philosophy of creative process. He first visited Panama in 2005, married in David, Chiriquí in 2006, and moved to Panama in 2007 after deciding the country offered fertile ground for a different life and creative practice.
The Work and Process
Agua de Luz centers on images of faceless figures that distort across water surfaces. Takakuwa says the paintings invite viewers to complete the portrait in their own imagination. Each work typically takes between one and three months to finish; he paints daily during the hours his daughters are at school.
The title, which Takakuwa describes as poetic, reflects his long-standing interest in manifestations of creation that precede language — a theme he connects to his academic study of poiética. Formally, the exhibition includes a triptych conceived as a trinity with interchangeable side panels and a central section that plays with reflection and transmission.
Influences and Inspirations
Takakuwa cites Panama’s people, light and landscapes — especially those of Chiriquí — as overlapping with childhood memories of his mother’s countryside and as core inspirations for his work. He references international influences such as Gerhard Richter’s layered glass pieces and names Panamanian painter Brooke Alfaro as an important contemporary reference who embodies Panama’s artistic identity for him.
Personal experience also shapes his work: Takakuwa says an adult baptism in Japan and conversations with an Argentine priest who studied the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas informed motifs such as the mother-and-child model in his paintings.
What This Means
The exhibition continues to position Panama as a creative home for artists from diverse backgrounds and highlights how local environments — the country’s tropical light, public spaces and provincial landscapes — can reshape an artist’s practice. Takakuwa’s combination of philosophical inquiry and figurative painting offers Panamanian audiences a reflective lens on everyday life and the ephemeral qualities of light and water.