Throughout his artistic career, Chiba has been known for his idiosyncratic quirky sense of curiosity and wonderment while his work seems to be about the synthesis – whether or not the morphology of the creatures or objects illustrated in his works are real or imagined – rather than the deconstruction of his subject matter and its world.  While immersed in the everyday culture of Bhubaneswar, the works in this exhibition characteristically portrays Chiba’s sense of wonder for the quotidian in this Indian city – he notices the extraordinary in the ordinary.  The artist has playfully arranged and juxtaposed disparate objects, such as a drawing of his breakfast in India superimposed onto a caudal view of a cow in 07:39, Butter Sadha, and have used equally playful colours in an array of fabrics and papers to form a world distinctly that of Taiga Chiba.

Born in 1950 in Shizuoka, Japan, Taiga Chiba studied in Tokyo at Musashino Art University before immigrating to Canada in 1981 where he completed a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal.  Currently based in Vancouver, Chiba has travelled extensively for research and artist residencies and his work can be found in various collections locally and internationally.