“Matsushima Triptych”, 2025, Monofilament, cotton, linen, kid mohair
“River Triptych”, 2023, Monofilament, cotton, linen, kid mohair
The two triptychs above are from Hiroko Takeda‘s solo exhibition, The Ten Thousand Threads at Hunter Dunbar Projects. These works evoking environmental patterns are presented along with others more focused on geometric forms.
From the gallery about the artist and her work-
Hiroko Takeda (b. 1966, Nagoya, Japan) is a Brooklyn-based artist who expresses her world in thread. She has taken her rigorous training in the Mingei Undo-the Japanese Arts and Crafts Movement-which honors and emphasizes the characteristics, capacities, treatments and beauty of materials-to boundary-crossing distances and depths in nearly 40 years of global practice. Mingei was developed in the mid-1920s in Japan by philosopher and aesthete Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961), along with a group of craftsmen, including the potters Hamada Shoji (1894-1978) and Kawai Kanjiro (1890-1966).
The Ten Thousand Threads takes its title from the Taoist concept of “the ten thousand things.” Often attributed to the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, it refers to the notion that in spite of the variety visible in the world, all things are fundamentally one. Applying this to Takeda’s practice, the multitudinous variations in weft and weave, color, pattern, and structure in her work can be seen as having an underlying connection; the works reside within the “the rule-bound world of weaving” and simultaneously emphasize an “invitation to the accidental, disorderly, or unexpected.” Takeda’s works in The Ten Thousand Threads strive to transcend boundaries between light and dark, raw and refined, geometry and fluidity, painting and sculpture.
The exhibition features works from 2016 to 2025, consisting of varying approaches to structure, pattern, and color. The Blueprint and Still Life series utilize the ‘Giant Waffle’ technique to evoke Minimalist rectilinear patterns. The deeply structured grids created by the warp and weft of Takeda’s weaving push the compositions dramatically into three-dimensional space.
Works using transparent thread, on the other hand, imply subtle and dreamlike landscapes. In her recent Matsushima triptych (2025), for example, Takeda uses staggered horizontal passages of fine and coarse textures to suggest the seascapes and islands of tsunami-weathered northeastern Japan. Whether underscoring geometric form or expressive vistas, Takeda’s work illuminates the fundamental tensions between tradition and innovation as well as complexity and reductionism.
As Takeda points out, “the world I see, like the world of warp and weft, has rules and constraints that are supposed to be good for us, but disorder happens naturally, and the other side of tension is fluidity. I manipulate and orchestrate the elements and welcome accidental moments of material behavior.” Whether underscoring geometric form or expressive vistas, Takeda’s work illuminates the fundamental tensions between tradition and innovation as well as complexity and reductionism.
This exhibition is on view until 4/26/25.