TOKYO.- MAKI Gallery is presenting Uncertain Romance, Japanese artist Takuro Tamura’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, at Tennoz, Tokyo. The show features a new body of work inspired by board games, specifically the Game of Life; Tamura makes dramatic alterations to its well-known motifs, transforming them into arresting, enigmatic metaphors for the complexities of human experience.

The artist takes the Game of Life’s iconic game pieces and expands their size and quantity to an absurd scale. Dispersed throughout the gallery space are colorful cylinders topped with spheres—massive versions of the plastic pegs used in-game to represent individual people. While the originals sport distinct, flat colors for easy identification, Tamura’s adaptations, collectively titled Nomadic Pegs, bear much more complicated facades layered with patterns, gradations, and overlapping coats of paint. The sculptures bring the pawns figuratively closer to reality—their enlarged size makes them significantly harder to move or replace on a whim, reflecting the gravity of the choices offered to the player. The nuanced, multihued surfaces suggest human beings are not as easily categorized in real life as they are in a fictional microcosm; almost everything about us can change according to the people we associate with, or the environment we find ourselves in.

Meanwhile, Tamura’s Flagment series comprises almost 200 stylized flag sculptures, each painted in a unique combination of colors. The flag is a symbol of possession in the Game of Life; players would stake a flag of their designated color whenever they acquire a building. Affixed to the gallery’s white walls at varying angles, they seem to claim dominion over nothing tangible—a floating signifier. The artist poses the question: if a collector were to purchase the flag, would they essentially be “purchasing” the abstract concept of ownership?

While the flags indicate control, Whence? How? Whereto?, a body of work in which the colorful winding tracks of the Game of Life are jumbled into convoluted masses with no beginning or end in sight, is chaos manifested. Embedded within each tangled web is the signature roulette wheel; although intended to provide the player with guidance, it refuses to do so, continuing to spin for what feels like eternity. While the original board game lays out predetermined paths with specific goals and achievements for the player, the artist’s interpretation embodies how the real world, particularly our information-inundated society, is open to an infinite number of trajectories that can change at any moment. Tamura fully embraces the indetermination of life—he describes his interests, emotions, and objectives as constantly in flux and sees beauty in the nebulous and chaotic, as evidenced by the lack of clear directionality in his labyrinthine roads.

Oscar Wilde famously wrote, “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” In Tamura’s case, the words “The very essence of uncertainty is romance” may be more fitting; life’s volatility is what makes it worth experiencing for him, as well as what motivates him to create art. The artist detaches familiar objects from their intended functions, even rendering them completely useless at times, as he challenges the viewer to shed their preconceived notions of the universe. Though his work boldly criticizes contemporary society—questioning its structures, norms, and assumptions it also earnestly encourages us to find wonder and fascination in the unpredictability of our existence.

Born in 1989 in Osaka, Japan, Takuro Tamura graduated from Kyoto University of the Arts in 2016, after which he worked as an assistant at SANDWICH, the artist collective led by Kohei Nawa. Now based in Tokyo, Tamura draws inspiration from his everyday surroundings and frequently incorporates motifs related to transportation into his work, such as asphalt, road signs, and traffic mirrors. With his keen observational skills, technical mastery, and playful sense of humor, the artist recontextualizes quotidian objects and materials, stripping them of their original functions and imbuing them with new meaning. Tamura taps into the minute, often overlooked details of daily life, taking fleeting realizations and expanding upon them to an almost absurd scale. Keeping his sharp critical eye squarely pointed toward contemporary society, the artist encourages us to find wonder and fascination in the most mundane of moments.

The artist’s solo exhibitions include 5W ＜ 1H, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2021) and OUT SIDE, y gion (Kyoto, 2018), as well as group shows and public art projects in major cities throughout Japan.