„...Eswathes of canvas circle the room, the same kind of canvas that usually offers painters a stable, secure support for their works. But Tanaka’s canvases dance. The perspectives change. Like light cast onto a nô mask to variously give the impression of joy or of mourning, she uses light like a brush—a brush that paints with perspective. Tanaka’s new piece was created on a residency in Japan. In Germany former sites of industry, like the Ruhr, are converted into cultural venues for such spectacles as the European Capital of Culture. In Japan, due to the country’s shifting demographics, the new converted art spaces are schools.In one such school Tanaka found chairs for six-year-olds, changed their construction and outline. The shadows they cast translate the manipulated forms back into real chairs. Reality is manipulated, but the spectator’s stoic eye transforms what it sees back into familiar forms. Naoko Tanaka counteracts this process, moving her own body around the stage like a spotlight. As a bearer of light, she dances with such precision that she is able to illuminate not her own body, but our imaginations...“

- Arnd Wesemann  - TANZ /03/2015