Lines of Flight: Paintings by Akihito Takuma

Via FiT

Grayscale paintings by Japanese artist Akihito Takuma that are finished by running a 2-meter wide brush down the canvas before the paint has dried. The technique reminds me of the work of Gerhard Richter in which he uses a straight edge to create a blurred effect in his earlier paintings based on newspaper photographs. Takuma states that his work “treasures that momentary feeling of tension. They depict landscapes featuring cities or horizons, Japanese Yoshino cherry trees, or more abstract things. Landscapes with cities or horizons inspire feelings of order. By running a brush over these, I want to bring depth to that order.”

My works always depict opposing forces—white and black or East and West, vertical and horizontal, surface and interior, dryness and moisture—in one image. I am eager to represent this delicate balance, whether it is seen or not. It might look destructive, but I do value balance. Recently, in the repeated work that I have done up to now, I have come to feel that there is beauty in unmanageable spaces. Right now, there is nothing else that can replace the emotion of the time when the entire image is wrapped up, the huge brush runs over it, and the instant where it cannot be corrected anymore.

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