NEW YORK—For her first solo show in New York, running at the Upper East Side’s Skarstedt Gallery through Dec. 12, Japanese artist Aya Takano has created 15 boldly dreamlike, fantastical paintings. Aesthetically, the paintings draw their influences from such diverse sources as manga, science fiction, erotic art, traditional Japanese kawaii (cuteness), and maybe even a bit of Impressionism. For thematic inspiration, Takano looked to the cultures of the southern Japanese Asami Oshima islands as well as the indigenous Ainu people, who have lived in Japan for centuries. It’s not a far stretch, then, to understand why her show bears the title “Reintegrating Worlds,” though why exactly they’re being reintegrated, and when they were blended before, are questions probably only she can answer.

Although this is her first solo exhibition in New York, the 30-something Takano, who belongs to Takashi Murakami’s art collective/production company Kaikai Kiki, has shown alone in Tokyo, Paris, Lyon, and Santa Monica. She is also, according to Kaikai Kiki, an accomplished manga artist, illustrator, and writer about science fiction in Japan.

The science fiction element shines through clearly in all of her work. Takano’s trademark characters are rosy-cheeked, unsettlingly sexual girls who are generally nude or semi-nude and skinny and shapeless as sticks. The figures themselves look fairly alien, caught somewhere between humans and cartoon characters, and Takano often places them in bizarre futuristic scenes or floating impossibly in present-day cityscapes. But in “Reintegrating Worlds,” her exploration of past cultures has inflected her paintings with a new kind of feeling, a mysticism that makes them feel simultaneously ancient and futuristic and gives them an added spirituality.

In these works, the girls live among animals, spirits, and nature. They don masks, boast patterned tattoos, and sometimes perform rituals that suggest sex, but aren’t quite. They seem to inhabit an all-female society where everyone mostly does what she wants — eat parfait, go swimming, sit around in suggestive poses with friends or creatures — and where there’s little distinction between women and girls. What Takano creates, more than the prospect of a world of the future (as with her past work), is the prospect that this may be a world of now — only it’s one we’ve never seen, which exists hidden from us, perhaps on a remote island off the coast of Japan somewhere.

Below, Aya Takano recommends three shows to see in New York:

“Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156–1868”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, through Jan. 10, 2010
"Ever since I was in elementary school, I've always loved samurai battle helmets. I especially like the ones with weird shapes. I found it very interesting that I've been featuring these items in my paintings for all these years and yet here I was seeing the real thing for the first time, in New York of all places. It was very moving"

Tracey Emin, “Only God Know I’m Good”
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, through Dec. 19, 2009
"I've always preferred art that has a strong emotional impact over conceptual works. This was my first time seeing Tracey Emin's artwork in person, and I’m happy to report that I felt something right away!"

Urs Fischer, “Marguerite de Ponty”
The New Museum, through Feb. 7, 2010
"It’s rare to find an exhibition that leaves you this giddy from start to finish! Ingenious! This is one you’ll want to bring a friend to!"