Denmark-based Japanese artist Yuko Takada Keller creates delicate paper installations that wash a sense of calm and ease over the viewer. Each of her suspended constructions utilizes countless triangular pieces of tracing paper meticulously dyed in refreshing, pastel hues. Each fragmented piece of paper is assembled with glue, transforming them from a collection of minute, disconnected shapes into one three-dimensional entity, just like molecules and cells.
Keller’s installations offer a beauty that is both manufactured and natural. They are made of materials that have clearly been manipulated, yet they tend to reflect the light and airiness of nature and organic matter. The pieces echo the translucency of the artist’s medium of choice while simultaneously representing the blissful coexistence of one’s consciousness and unconsciousness. The artist says, “Tracing paper has a transparency and an untransparency. I’m interested in how tracing paper is like a skin membrane. The skin membrane lies between dream and reality.”
