On View
Not on viewObject number2023.66
Folds 23 (Blue Center)
Artist
Barbara Takenaga
(American, 1949)
Date2023
Mediumoil on linen
Dimensionscanvas: 36 × 44 × 1 1/2 in. (91.4 × 111.8 × 3.8 cm)
frame: 37 7/8 × 45 13/16 × 2 1/4 in. (96.2 × 116.4 × 5.7 cm)
frame: 37 7/8 × 45 13/16 × 2 1/4 in. (96.2 × 116.4 × 5.7 cm)
Credit LineJoy Light East Asian Art Acquisition and Exhibition Fund
Exhibition History"Sugoi! 200 Years of Japanese Art," KIA, Galleries 2 & 5 (May 13, 2023 - September 24, 2023)Label TextThrough color and line, Barbara Takenaga has created her own visual language. Her abstract visions can be experienced as realms of immense or minuscule scale, likened to vistas across vast cosmic nebulae or to fantastic voyages at the molecular level. Takenaga pours, spills, and drips the paint across her canvases. She states, “In some ways, it’s the nature of the paint itself, without me doing much to encourage the outcome. Liquid paint tends to pool or drag as it dries. It’s a wonderful micro view of bigger forces—gravity, momentum, natural patterning. When I start working with brushes, I often just follow the direction of the paint in a kind of collaboration. But I must have a pull toward that kind of cosmic imagery, because it keeps emerging.”
[From Cobalt to Indigo: The Power of Blue in East Asia, March 28 - July 12, 2026]
