PROFILE

Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1989. Completed a master’s degree at Kyoto City University of Arts Graduate School of Arts (Oil Painting) in 2015. Major solo exhibitions include “What Is Sight Seeing?” (Horikawa Housing Complex Artothèque, Kyoto, 2015), “Follow the Unrelatedness” (COHJU Contemporary Art, Kyoto, 2017), and “Docosoco no Naninani” (Galley Kei-Fu, Kyoto, 2019).

DATE

2017

MEDIUM

oil on canvas

DIMENSIONS

H120×W230×D3cm

STATEMENT

What does the sense of sight perceive? My painting expresses the midpoint of the motif (semantic content and space) and the image (color and material). I focus on the fact that each suppresses the other while simultaneously providing room for the other to grow, and explore the difference of recognition on the surface. Objects someone has arranged, and the relationship between those objects, are my paintings’ motifs. Something found in a show-window or someone’s garden is displayed according to somebody else’s taste, and hence possesses a unique aura and grace. I detect a kind of comfort in this unfamiliarity with those objects, and this forms the creative beginning of my works. Transparent layers made from alkyd resin and oils mingle with each other, and lumps of my medium spread out with the brush pile up gradually. This medium enables me to express the stroke of a brush pursuing a motif and, at the same time, hampers expression with its stickiness and color. I am unable to ignore either of these properties, and because of this some parts of the motif slip out in the painting process. One important aspect in my works is that there is always something I’ve lost while painting. Making strokes with the brush while ruminating upon the immovable distance between my thoughts and the subject is, to me, what it means to “paint.”

ABOUT MUSIC AND ART

Recently I’m just listening to Lee Lang and Satoko Shibata’s Run Away. Coming home from my part-time job, I get off the last train of the night and walk the one road to my home without seeing the shadow of a single person. Sometimes I do a little dance to the music that’s coming out of my earphones as I walk. Opening my door like this, I move around my room and take off my clothes, and up on the canvas, where the paint is, I settle down just a little and wipe off my hands, before setting down to paint. I gradually let the sweat dissipate, and my head feels light. For me, music can help when I am thinking of paintings. It turns into something I can hum.

Tomoko Takagi PLAYLIST