Sunlight scattered like carelessly tossed jewels across water is just one simple scene of nature central to Japanese artist Nobuyuki Takahashi’s new body of work, now on exhibit in the U.S. for the first time at Rena Bransten Projects. Extraneous detail is jettisoned in favor of careful gradations of color in the sky in “Sunlight in February” and the shadowy profiles of sentinel-like growths in “Pine Tree in Uji.” [...] with the reflection of a roughly rendered tree line in “Autumn Sky,” the artist punctuates the scene with minimal flecks of fall color, giving it an almost offhand sense of enchantment.