Takenouchi’s Stone Buddha comprised of a series of woodblocks shaped into rocklike formations that incorporate the Tenri Gallery’s columns, results in a site specific forest of trees and rocks. Separately each piece can be read as a Buddha figure but also as garden of monoliths. The formation’s unevenness repeats the shapes of the Japanese mountain ranges but also to the North Korean range Kumgang-san with whom Buddha images are associated. Takenouchi’s constructions embody the intrinsic nature of Japanese esthetics “suggestion, irregularity, simplicity, and perishability.” His forms are suggestive of the Buddha figure rather than being descriptive on the motif, his compositional designs are asymmetrically laid out, his monochromatic tones simple yet sensuous, and his medium perishable paper. His works are understated expressions of symbolic form characterized by grand gesture.

 His Fossilized Birds are encased in steel cages enabling the viewer to come into contact with their own vulnerability in that they produce an unnerving sensation maintaining their critical edge as artworks. The birds have already fossilized to become part of the rocks into which they’ve permutated. Upon closer examination, the variegated shapes of his artistic vocabulary become apparent as they are painted in white upon Japanese black paper. Birds sitting on bamboo branches and foliage, natural rocks and valleys, heathered hills and vales, appear and disappear into the cun folds of mountains, to reappear on their crests. The rock formations into which Takenouchi has shaped his bird fossils can be discussed in light of the recent discoveries of Paleontologists in China that unearthed a 121-year old fossil bird embryo that is possibly the world’s oldest. Or, his Fossilized Birds can be seen in terms of reincarnation which in Buddhism is the most important concept espousing endless rebirth until one has learned enough to arrive at the state of nirvana. In physical terms, when mammals die, their physical bodies return to nature to become minerals that feed the plants that feed humanity in a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth. In any case processes are tantamount to Takenouchi’s oeuvre in the form of aging, nature, transmutation, transcendence, or alteration.