The prestigious ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL is proud to host the first solo exhibition in Korea by esteemed Japanese artist, Yuki SAEGUSA. Titled “Not Even on Ship,” the exhibition runs from July 10 to August 17, 2024, and showcases SAEGUSA’s exceptional talent and unique artistic approach.
Bridging Eastern and Western Artistry
Born in 1987, Yuki SAEGUSA is celebrated for her series of paintings, primarily crafted with oil and tempera, where she explores an array of materials and media. Her works bring to life landscapes of an ideational world, thoughtfully reconstructed through intricate personal memories and perspectives. Drawing inspiration from traditional Japanese landscape painting and Northern European Flemish painting, SAEGUSA effortlessly blends Eastern and Western painting styles in her work.
A Glimpse into SAEGUSA’s Hometown
Her landscapes, rooted in the aesthetic of her hometown, Azumino City, reveal an innovative fusion of traditional East Asian landscape painting’s multi-perspective composition and the Flemish painting’s detailed depiction and mystical narrative structure. SAEGUSA presents a unique array of 34 works in the ongoing exhibition, offering art enthusiasts a glimpse of her characteristic delicate brushwork.
An Existential Journey
SAEGUSA’s canvases depict “a place that exists in someone’s mind but nowhere in reality.” Her use of meticulously detailed landscapes and representations of small, cartoonish animals strike a paradoxical balance, revealing the uncertainties and ambiguities of personal daily experiences, subjective memories, and imagination. In this way, her canvas becomes an endlessly explorable unknown world, an open-ended voyage with no fixed destination or specific route.
The Art of Time and Gravity
Among her works is “Gravity Moon” (2023), where a golden folding screen painted with Japanese pigments examines the relationship between gravity and time. Surrounding it are 12 paintings from the “Black Hole Sun” series (2023-2024) that symbolize the year, month, and day, arranged as if in an orbit around the screen. The interplay between the time-worn folding screen and the gravitational pull of the small ‘black holes’ creates a unique, organically intertwined space.
The Infinite Voyage of Painting
The golden ship anchored in her painting “Not Even on Ship” (2023) underscores the metaphorical representation of the infinite possibilities of painting, where materials are repurposed and reborn, unconfined to their given usage. The exhibition encapsulates SAEGUSA’s vision of painting as an endless voyage – a journey through the artist’s own thoughts and gestures, intertwined with the unique characteristics and ‘memories’ of the materials employed.
Journey with us into the mystical world of Yuki SAEGUSA, a realm where art knows no boundaries, and let your imagination take flight into her infinite universe of ‘places that are nowhere.’
