Takefumi Hori's additive layering process with gold combined with the continual stripping back and scraping away of areas of paint results in work that progressively unfolds to the viewer over time. Each layer, revealed or concealed, gives the frontal surface of the painting temporality and visual impact. These are not works to be simply glanced at, the nuances and gradations warrant a more thoughtful and pensive gaze.
MIYABI 雅: one of the traditional Japanese aesthetic ideals. In modern Japanese, the word is usually translated as elegance and/or refinement.
Hori's balanced and harmonious paintings can be best described as Miyabi. His fundamental understanding of composition and the way our eyes, and therefore our minds, 'read' results in works that are not only elegant and refined but also an expansion of the vocabulary of painting. The combination of the different Gold karat grades (eighteen, twenty-two and twenty-four) enables him to achieve a remarkable depth and variety of effects.
Whereas Hori affixes no definitive prescribed meaning to gold he embraces its diverse historical and cultural associations; from Western wealth and opulence to the more East Asian allusions to enlightenment and inner peace. These are references all can share and they will each have a different degree of importance unique to the individual.