Takako Hojo

Intruding on Myself --- on the work of Takako Hojo

Human beings are like an envelope that comes into contact with the outside world through the skin. We become feverish when hot, we cling firm against fluctuations, we respond to sound and feel pressure from air vibrations. Each such reaction contributes to the construction of a human life. Our reactive surfaces have evolved specialised organs to help us ? the ear for sound, the nose for smell, and perhaps first of all, the eye for sight, that is, sensing light. Each organ is a receptor for its purpose, and in cooperation with the brain, becomes capable of adjustments to ensure the conditions necessary for our survival. The brain collates this information into cognitional patterns to understand this sensory data.

People today still live under these same conditions, so it follows that our depictions of the outside environment use commonly accepted shapes and colours. We have unstated rules that, say, trees or grass, mountains, or rivers should all appear in a given manner. Most artworks representing natural phenomena, or landscapes, are in this mode. Those of Hojo are not. She uses the concept of natural forces intruding into herself. Her work is able to regain the original sensitivity of skin, and it shows how she has exposed her body to the elements. The things she captures in her acts of depiction are not the shapes of things as such, but afterimages of the forces she has received, banked as quantities of energy. It is rare indeed to contact the external environment in such a way, not least in our modern world of easily-assimilated imagery, because we are surprisingly willing to be deceived by the brain’s replacement images.

Hojo formerly made her ambiguous images of plants and water from the equally ambiguous external pressures she felt on her skin. Recently she has shown an increasing interest in light. Her present works use explosive colours to intrude light into the sensory organs. This does not mean she is unconditionally drowned in light, but that she uses light to give her picture planes the solid and subjective structures of tableaux. These two features ensure that Hojo will be closely followed as a painter with an exciting future.

Kozo Shioe
Director, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art