Tomoko Takeda

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

My work explores the relationship between organic life and the invisible structures that shape it. In my large-scale acrylic paintings, fluid, biomorphic forms coexist with geometric patterns that suggest systems, data, code, and other forms of underlying order. I am interested in the tension between these two visual languages. The organic forms emerge through physical processes of painting—layering, pouring, staining, and responding intuitively to what develops on the surface. In contrast, the geometric elements are deliberately constructed. They interrupt, organize, and sometimes disappear into the more fluid forms around them. Gold often occupies the space between these worlds. Rather than using it simply as decoration, I think of gold as a way of making an invisible structure temporarily visible. Its appearance shifts with light and the viewer’s position, allowing something seemingly fixed to become unstable and perceptual. My practice is rooted in the physical act of making. At a time when images and information can be generated and reproduced with increasing ease, I am drawn to what remains particular to material experience: touch, resistance, accident, repetition, and the accumulated decisions of the hand. Through the coexistence of organic and geometric forms, I am interested in whether systems and lived experience can occupy the same space without resolving into one another.

Artwork