Takako Hojo: Saturation

Takako Hojo has been widely known since her painting was presented at “Vision of Contemporary Art”, the exhibition held in 2004. Changing her style from abstract painting of early age to more representational landscape after residential program at Ohara Museum of Art in 2006, she has been drawing natural scenery surrounding herself focusing especially in expression of light. The grains of light outpouring throughout canvases, and white and pink flowers drawn by dripping were impressively presented in the exhibition at Art Front Gallery held in end of 2010. The light let us feel density of air sparkling in scenery she drew.
A year and a half later, we finally can see Hojo’s new artworks again. These days, Hojo, who has been drawing forests and flowers, remarkably expands the motif. Now she confronts with growing importance of touch of brush and sense of matiere. Snowy forest and plants of summer are drawn by different touch according to motifs, and viewers may experience dense air existing in the canvas.
What should be aware of is distance between drawn subject. When we talk about painting and photograph, and try to distinguish those by saying that we “take a picture of scenery” or “draw the object”, the difference is just made by how far we capture the subject from. Artists would draw paintings through history of landscape and still life as a genre and we often take a snap, after deciding its composition including sky or ground unconsciously. Hojo’s recent works seem to try fundamentally breaking such rule. There is invisible air between us and the object in general, and we feel sense of distance by visual distance and ambiguous focus which casted light creates. The subject drawn by Hojo cutting out from scenery and replacing with foreground gets closer to us. Nevertheless, the air we feel in seeing the scenery seems spreading to a space between viewers and the canvas.
Hojo, expected for her future development with potential of painting, will present recent works altogether at Daikanyama.

Toshio Kondo, Art Front Gallery