About Akihito Takuma

”There is beauty in unmanageable spaces.”

My works are made with oil paint on canvas. Before the paint has dried, I run a 2m wide brush from top to bottom, finishing the work all at once. With this method, it is impossible to correct any individual sections. My works treasure 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. Japanese Yoshino cherry trees are cloned from grafts of other trees. They spread rapidly in post war Japan because they are easy to manage, and I treat them as a symbol of that management. And I discovered that by running a brush over abstract things, various accidental white spots appeared.

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 any more.