Yukiko Suto “Field Exhibition”
Take Ninagawa just opened a new exhibition of large scale panels by Yukiko Suto. Each of the four images, done in a combination of pencil and oil on gesso-covered panels took months to produce, and Sato’s effort can only be properly appreciated through a close examination of these meticulously executed landscapes. The paintings originate in photographs taken by the artist, but little of the ease and informality we associate with nature remains in the final product, the aestheticized version of the landscapes. Suto’s visual recollections—every hyper-realist blade of grass, every flower bud, every little rock—render live nature symbolic. The works, for the most part monochrome, owning to the the dominant graphite of the pencil, are punctuated with matte bits of color which appear to float upon the surface of the support. It is as if we are witnessing a transformation of an embodied landscape into an imagined one: colors and lines fading away, the serenity of the panel seeping through and finally taking over.
The exhibition will run through November 27.
