Barbara Takenaga

In the early 2000s, Takenaga committed to abstraction, working modestly scaled variations on a set format: centripetal or centrifugal patterns that radiate or coil from a slightly off-center focal point, forming all-over fields that evoke nocturnal skies and celestial forms (e.g., Night Painting, 2001).[9][2][31] New York Times critic Ken Johnson described these paintings as "optically riveting and transcendentally suggestive [of] a swarming, spacey feeling like traveling at the speed of light through a galaxy or a psychic center of illumination."[9] Her late-2001 work was created in the shadow of grief following the death of her mother; she immortalized the memory of both her parents in the ethereal works Shizue and Toshiwo—bright, radiating constellations of concentric dots and spirals on nebulous blue fields that convey both mortality and visual euphoria.[23][9]

Barbara Takenaga, Ozma, acrylic on linen, 70 in × 60 in (1,800 mm × 1,500 mm), 2009.

Critics such as Art in America 's Robert Kushner identified an expansion of Takenaga's vocabulary in shows at McKenzie Fine Art (2003, 2005), which yielded surprising, more dynamic arrangements within her tight self-imposed parameters.[31][3][4] Feathery swirls in Wave (2002) suggest studies of ornate, autonomous systems evoking both decorative cross-cultural and scientific imagery; later works resemble vibrant cellular or bubble forms (Rubazu), bulbous spiraled microorganisms (Tarazed #1), and jeweled mandala or Paisley patterns (Gold + Red).[3][4][23] In subsequent work, she explored subdued palettes evoking loss—grays, white, black, pale greens and turquoises, and metallic golds and silvers—and forms suggesting ambiguous, otherworldly environs (Ghost Triptych 2007–8), molecular frameworks or the suction-cup undersides of sea stars and octopuses (Ozma, 2009), and bent, skewed grids and lattices like three-dimensional, topographic maps of black holes that approach Op art, such as Angel (pink) (2008) and Zardo (2009).[32][6][23]

In 2010, Takenaga made two significant shifts in her work: she began incorporating a flat, linear element serving as both horizon and spatial division, and she relinquished some control, allowing chance elements and looser patterns (still dot swirls, undulating constellations and bursting whorls) to emerge in bolder compositions.[33][21][26] Critics suggest the horizon line—normally a stabilizing element—disrupted her typically ordered work, allowing a wider pictorial range to evolve that alluded to imaginary landscape and aquatic as well as galactic realms.[1][33][34]

The shifts first appeared in paintings that drew on Takenaga's midwestern upbringing.[30][24] The largely gray and blue Nebraska Painting EL1 (2010) and Whiteout (2011) suggest limitless winter fields vanishing into big skies, while the more colorful Sparkler (Red Line) (2010) and Red Funnel (2013) allude to fireworks, carnival lights and tornadoes.[30][24][2] She renewed her interest in ambitiously scaled, horizontal work in the panoramic triptychs Rise/Fall and Forte (2011), Diptych (Ikat) (2012), and later, Nebraska (2015, MASS MoCA), a 110-foot mural that repeated a dizzying, hand-painted wallpaper pattern reminiscent of a snowy, furrowed field under a distant blue sky.[33][12][23] John Yau identifies a dissonance and instability he likens to dissimilar systems invading each other's territory in this work (e.g., Ronin, 2011). He attributes this to her looser approach and use of unearthly metallic paints (which change with the angle of the light), noting a collective, disquieting effect he interprets as acknowledgement of an indifferent universe.[33] Art in America's Carol Diehl, however, discerns a sense of order beyond the easily comprehensible in the work's suspension between visual excess and rigor; she compares its mystical quality to van Gogh's The Starry Night.[1]

In her later work, Takenaga has admitted more open space and exposed the drips, puddles, and spatters of her modulated underpaintings as a compositional element (e.g., the lantern-like Green Light, 2013).[23][14] She has also continued to expand her associative range to include northern lights, meteor showers (Night Painting (JFM), 2016), geodes and fractals, in work that Ken Johnson describes as viewed more "through the ecstatic, possibly pharmaceutically aided perceptions of a hippie dreamer" than "the technologically assisted eyes of a scientist."[35][36][37]

Barbara Takenaga, Manifold 5, acrylic on linen, 70 in × 225 in (1,800 mm × 5,700 mm), 2018.

Takenaga's paintings in the shows "Outset" (2018) and "Manifold" (2019) at DC Moore Gallery employ austere, contemplative palettes (black, iridescent white, silvery gray and blue) and bolder, shifting figure-ground relationships featuring large, dark shapes like holes in the images (e.g., Aeaea; Hello).[38][39][40] Their mysterious forms draw widely—on classical Japanese art, scientific imagery and mid-century abstraction—and leave behind her fields, tarmacs and horizon lines for more confrontational, turbulent references to explosions, space travel, drifting land masses, and microbiology, evoking a world of constant pressure and relentless change.[10][8][41] Works such as the sprawling, five-panel Manifold 5 use abstracted silhouette imagery (a river, clouds, robes, elephants, votive candles, geyser forms) taken from Japanese screens and other Eastern sources; they function as patterns or dark grounds flipping between positive shapes and negative space.[8][10][41] The contrasting Serrulata (in translation, cherry tree) layers and presses together multiple processes—patterns, pours, Sumi ink-like splotches, and drips of dark blue, black and gray—creating patterns on a shell pink ground to suggest cherry blossoms and themes of disruption, dispersal, decay and transience.[10][8]