Takeshi Yokoshima is a Japanese contemporary artist based in Tokyo. He works with acrylic, ink and acrylic medium on paper mounted on wooden panel, building each painting through a layered, intuitive process — drawing pigment across the surface with his hands and tools, pressing and lifting paper to generate texture, and allowing ink to move freely through the medium.

Rather than imposing a predetermined image, Yokoshima positions himself as a witness to what emerges. Colors bleed and merge at their boundaries; organic forms rise from beneath translucent layers, suggesting fossils, cellular structures, or the surface of deep water. Each work exists as a record of forces — material and chance — briefly held in balance.

Ascending Blue-violet plume

2026

Ink and acrylic medium on paper, mounted on wooden panel

65.2 × 65.2 × 2.2 cm　(25.7 × 25.7 × 0.9 in)

Transition from Turquoise to Orange

2026

Acrylic, ink and acrylic medium on paper, mounted on wooden panel

116.7 × 116.7 × 2.8 cm　(45.9 × 45.9 × 1.1 in)

Rising Red

2026

Acrylic, ink and acrylic medium on paper, mounted on wooden panel

53.0 × 53.0 × 2.0 cm　(20.9 × 20.9 × 0.8 in)

  The Space Before Words Emerge

No system endures forever. No value remains fixed. The world transforms without pause, confronting us with the reality that nothing possesses a stable, unchanging essence. And yet we cannot stop seeking "correct answers" or "meaning." Perhaps because our hearts cannot bear the overwhelming groundlessness of this world.

Language — as template, as mold — converts raw, undifferentiated experience into something we can grasp. But in doing so, it quietly substitutes the world's mysteries with things we already "know," stealing from us the experience of receiving the unknown as it truly is. A child who sees a winged creature for the first time is overwhelmed by its color, its movement. Once told "that is a butterfly," the sense of awe quietly disappears.

For me, painting is a trace of transformation — a place where fixed meanings unravel, where new possibilities emerge and dissolve. Unlike language, painting offers the unintelligible in its raw form. It is the space before words emerge — where the boundary between self and world erodes, dissolves, and flows into one another.

Takeshi Yokoshima

Abstract Painter — Tokyo, Japan

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Contact For inquiries about artworks or exhibitions, please email: [email protected]