Being in a room filled with smaller-than-fist sized Eishi faces looking at you is like having a hundred little mirrors reflecting your soul. Eishi Takaoka, based out of Kagoshima, Japan, has his first solo San Francisco exhibition at Giant Robot in the Haight. One hundred and one hand-carved wooden heads are presented – most with their short necks plugged into the tops of small medicine bottles. This gives the wooden heads an appearance of sitting atop fragile stands rather than crowning limbless bodies.

The hundred and one faces at first appear to wear the same expression, but this impression dissolves upon closer inspection. Eishi Takaoka has accomplished something brilliant. The characters are almost expressionless with their simple eyes, mouths and noses carved into almost stark white heads. Subtle additions – odd headpieces or growths, unnatural ears, disfigurations painted with natural pigment -- don each piece. One by one they draw you in and become alive with an abundance of emotional resonance that is almost as restrained as the heads choked by the bottles. Other heads sit on carved pillow bases, which provide comfort for the character and, as a consequence, make them more whimsical and harlequin.

It’s hard to say whether the 101 pieces are all the same character in Takaoka’s imagination wearing different emotions or each one is an emotion that Takaoka magically yanked out of the viewer’s gut and carved into wood. It’s as if Takaoka has filled a room with orphaned heads that beckon you to take them home with you. The choice is a simple connection between the adoptive parent and the face that seems to be struggling with helplessness, hope and yearning. Though Takaoka’s works are only heads they do not weigh on you with darkness. Still, they are haunting, as each seems to tell its own story, which combines into a discordant choir of imagined whispers.

Giant Robot says, “Takaoka's unique work is rooted in a personal fantasy world that is fueled by the emotional ups and downs of daily life in lower-middle class Japan. Heavily influenced by the expressive songs of the Japanese punk rock group Eastern Youth, Takaoka releases his frustration with life in Kagoshima and feelings into each of his sculptures.” For me however, Takaoka's faces also bring out the isolation within our own compartmentalized feelings. Haruki Murakami used an Eishi Takaoka image for the cover of his 2005 novel Kafka on the Shore.

The work, some still available, is priced between $200 and $1000, with most of the pieces being $250. I anticipate these hundred and one heads will scatter to a variety of homes – some in clusters, others solo – but like a Diaspora community, and they will not lose their connection.

Go see the Eishi Takaoka show at Giant Robot, 618 Shrader Street (around the corner from Amoeba), SF. Spend some time with the characters; see what their body language – facial cues – say to you. Figure out which ones would be friends, would couple, would be enemies and those who may offend. Maybe find some friends? Or just take it all in and ask yourself what 101 little mirrors feel like.

Eishi Takaoka at Giant Robot SF, May 27 – June 21 http://www.gr-sf.com