Yoko Takashima

Yoko Takashima has been working with slide and video installations for the past three years. Using this technology, she manipulates the movement, time and scale of the image to create a dynamic physical and psychological relationship between the viewer, the space of the gallery and the work.

Illuminated images within the darkened confines of the gallery are the stage for her exploration of the particularities of human activity and experience within social and cultural structures, and the ambiguity between the foreign and the familiar. Takashima employs footage of minimal body gestures and repetitive movement to instill a meditative yet unsettling sensation.

Brushism focuses on a close-up of the artist's mouth as she brushes her teeth. This image, projected onto a curved surface and then reflected onto hanging Plexiglass discs, intensifies a mundane daily routine that is more often than not taken for granted. In this work it becomes an exaggerated self-conscious ritual of restricted movement within a psychologically private and often reflective space that is inhabited for short periods of time.

Breathing Hand incorporates computer processed images that have been manipulated using the "Morph" program. With eight different still images, Takashima creates a pulsating human hand that undergoes a circuitous metamorphosis moving from fetal stage to death and back again. The scale of the image and intensity of the audio component places the viewer in an intimate and focused relationship with a microcosm of bodily transformation.

Yoko Takashima was born in Nagoya, Japan and moved to Canada in 1988 where she attended the University of Lethbridge, Alberta and the University of Victoria. Upcoming exhibitions include the New Gallery, Calgary; Neutral Ground, Saskatoon; A Space, Toronto; and Optical, Montreal.