{"id":400,"date":"2025-06-12T21:15:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T20:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/?p=400"},"modified":"2026-05-07T18:58:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:58:35","slug":"victor-takeru-the-quiet-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/2025\/06\/12\/victor-takeru-the-quiet-within\/","title":{"rendered":"VICTOR TAKERU, THE QUIET WITHIN"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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At just 27, Franco-Japanese artist Victor<\/strong>Takeru is emerging as a quiet force in contemporary painting. Trained in graphic design, self-taught in fine art, he\u2019s developed a delicate, introspective visual language he calls \u201cambient music painting.\u201d A conversation with a soft-spoken painter whose work explo<\/strong>res calm, disappearance, and the art of observation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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What was your artistic path like?<\/strong><\/em>
I\u2019ve been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil. As a kid, I was really into comics, mainly French ones. I had this habit of always starting new stories without finishing them\u2026 My parents saw that drawing was the one thing I really stuck with, so they encouraged me. After middle school, I went to an applied arts high school, then studied graphic design at Gobelins.\"\"<\/p>\n

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Why did you leave design behind?<\/strong><\/em>
Graphic design taught me the tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, and so on. But it didn\u2019t fulfill me. I struggled with working on commissions or answering to clients. So, I left that behind and started focusing entirely on painting, on my own terms.<\/p>\n

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And then you went to Japan?<\/strong><\/em>
Yes. I needed a breath of fresh air. I went alone, with the intention of doing an exhibition in Tokyo and to figure out whether I really wanted to continue in this field. Covid kept me there longer than expected, but that turned out to be a gift: I had time to paint, to explore, to develop a style. What you might learn at an art school, I had to figure out on my own. Building a coherent universe takes time.<\/p>\n

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How would you describe that universe?<\/strong><\/em>
I call it\u00a0Ambient Music Painting<\/em>. It\u2019s a term I invented to describe the mood of my work: quiet, full, like ambient music by Brian Eno. You can walk past it and feel nothing, or suddenly be hit by something unexpected. I\u2019m totally okay with my paintings hanging in a space where no one really looks at them. It\u2019s like music for airports: barely noticeable, but it fills the room.<\/p>\n

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Is your work mostly introspective?<\/strong><\/em>
Yes. Most of my paintings are self-portraits, but without eyes. I never paint the gaze. I want viewers to take in the whole painting without being pulled straight into eye contact. There\u2019s something about hiding, about withdrawal, in my work. That says a lot about who I am. I\u2019ve never been super comfortable in front of a camera. The self-portrait is a step toward self-acceptance, but I\u2019m not interested in overexposure.<\/p>\n

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Do you work exclusively with oil?<\/strong><\/em>
Mostly, yes. I started with acrylic, but it dries too fast. Oil lets me breathe. It opens more possibilities, especially in terms of texture and depth. That said, I still use acrylic for certain flat areas.<\/p>\n

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Who are your influences?<\/strong><\/em>
They change over time. I admire\u00a0Claire Tabouret<\/a>,\u00a0Sterling Ruby<\/a>,\u00a0Brian Calvin<\/a>, L\u00e9on Spilliaert\u2026 Right now, I\u2019m really into\u00a0Florian Krewer<\/a>. There\u2019s something childlike in his work: na\u00efve on the surface, but also dark underneath. It resonates with me. As for Japanese art, I wasn\u2019t really influenced by manga or traditional styles. But I do think the way I structure my images comes from somewhere, maybe my mother\u2019s Japanese sense of order, of balance.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s your studio routine like?<\/strong><\/em>
Coffee. Ambient music. Lots of breaks. I probably have some attention issues. I find it hard to focus for long stretches. But even during breaks, I\u2019m still feeding my brain, reading, flipping through books. My mind stays creative.<\/p>\n

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What are you working on now?<\/strong><\/em>
I\u2019m preparing a show in Shanghai for September. I\u2019m working on a series of self-portraits combined with doorways: thresholds, transitions, moments of intimacy. And there\u2019s this recurring \u201ccamouflage cap\u201d that I often paint: a kind of symbol for staying under the radar.<\/p>\n

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And Tokyo: how has it influenced your work?<\/strong><\/em>
Tokyo gives me peace. People think of it as hectic, but it\u2019s actually very calm. Even Shibuya: if you walk just one block over, suddenly it\u2019s quiet. That contrast is unique. Paris feels much more cramped and noisier to me. Here, I can breathe. And I think that shows in my painting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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@victortakeru<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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GALLERY<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n

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At just 27, Franco-Japanese artist VictorTakeru is emerging as a quiet force in contemporary painting. Trained in graphic design, self-taught in fine art, he\u2019s developed a delicate, introspective visual language he calls \u201cambient music painting.\u201d A conversation with a soft-spoken painter whose…<\/p>\n

Read more\u2026VICTOR TAKERU, THE QUIET WITHIN<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","iawp_total_views":16,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,4,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-culture","category-tokyo","ratio-3-2","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}