Los Angeles Times Review:
Takako Yamaguchi turns white and gray paint into illusion of startling intensity
What’s on LA: Pick of the Week
November 3 - December 21, 2019
Opening Reception:
Sunday, November 3, 2-5 pm
Installation View
Photo Credit: Doug Henry
Veteran Los Angeles painter Takako Yamaguchi is showing seventeen new paintings at As Is. These modestly scaled (18" x 24") oil on linen paintings present an inventory of simple shapes and forms of the kind we associate with the history of modernist abstraction; an association heightened by their nearly monochromatic white-on-white palette. Cutting against expectations of the genre, however, this minimalist imagery is all hand-painted by the artist from source photos in a trompe l'oeil style. The resulting artworks oscillate uneasily between the poles of abstraction and representation, high culture and kitsch, slow (production) and fast (reception) without finally settling in one camp or the other. In this, Yamaguchi extends a strategy of calculated ambiguity that began in her earliest "Pattern and Decoration" paintings of the 1980s, an example of which is included in the MOCA, Los Angeles exhibition With Pleasure, coinciding with her show at As Is.
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (1), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (2), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (3), 2017-2019, 18”x 24” ,Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (4), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (5), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (6), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (7), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (8), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (9), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (10), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (11), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (12), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (13), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (14), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (15), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (16), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen
Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (17), 2017-2019, 18”x 24”, Oil on linen