Taketo Muroi - Latent grains 1

Technique: Promptography on fine art paper
Image size: 30 x 30 cm
Edition: 3 + 1 AP
Year: 2025

Latent Grains 1

Latent Grains 1 opens the series as a kind of base tone, in which all subsequent shifts are already inherent. The image shows a continuous color transition from deep blue through turquoise and green to yellow and orange. This seemingly harmonious progression, however, is not smooth or neutral: the transitions appear soft, but not seamless, as if minimal resistances, frictions, or blurrings are evident in the color field.

Within the context of the series, this work refers to the "latent" as a state prior to form. Color here appears not as expression or symbol, but as an energetic field—comparable to an unmanifested pictorial idea. In the Japanese tradition of perception, particularly in Zen, this can be interpreted as Ma : an intermediate space, a temporal and visual state of becoming, not of being.

From an animistic perspective, each color possesses its own inherent power. Blue and green convey a cool, understated presence, while yellow and orange signify a subtle intensification without tipping into expressive gestures. Nothing dominates; everything remains in balance.

Read through a media-critical lens, Latent Grains 1 reflects on the state of algorithmic image production, in which images no longer arise from motives but from probabilities. The work shows not a result, but a process—a visual field on the verge of a decision. For Taketo Muroi, this first image in the series is thus a starting point: seeing here begins not with meaning, but with perception itself.