Barbara Takenaga at Kemper Museum: scale, pattern, perception

Organized into four thematic sections, the show highlights process, shifts in scale, illusion, and references to art history. Rather than treating abstraction as a closed field, Takenaga’s paintings keep unsettling what the eye expects: distance can collapse, structure can feel unstable, and the image can seem to expand while it is being read.

For artists and painting lovers, the appeal is in the craft as much as in the image. Takenaga describes her work as drawing on natural phenomena, imagined landscapes, microscopic or cosmic views, and a labor-intensive balance between chance and order. That tension gives the paintings their charge, visible in the density of the mark, the layering of patterns, and the way the surface stays active across the whole canvas.

Drawn from public and private collections across the United States, the exhibition includes works up to her most recent paintings, showing how her canvases have grown in scale while staying committed to the same questions. It offers a clear view of abstraction as a practice of looking: one that invites viewers to slow down, trace relationships, and find their own way through the composition.