MASAKO YASUKI

'The Paintings before Our Eyes'
Tetsuya Miyata, Japanese Modern Art Critic

Masako Yasuki has always painted. Her work rivals the nihilism of Francis Bacon, the materialism of Anselm Kiefer, and the deteriorism of Antonio Lopez. Of course, as Yasuki has a good eye, it is no exaggeration to say that she is burdened with each of these themes.Yet Yasuki looks beyond her predecessors and questions why she continues to paint in the "Here and Now". Indeed, as observers, how often we fail to see the world right in front of our eyes. Sharing the same time vortex as the artist, we are prevented from realizing the true value of his or her creations.

This exhibition is different, as it shows the change in the artist’s process from her early stage through today, allowing us to recapture lost time. These are the paintings before our eyes.

Several years have passed since we joined the 21st century. Looking back, although oil painting was introduced in Japan at the end of the Edo period (1603-1867), it wasn't until the Meiji Restoration (1868) and the movement to create a Western-style country, that many paintings cropped up as Imperial treasures. Society’s vague 1930s interest in surrealism and its abstract tendency was revisited in the form of oil painting amidst postwar defeat. Oil painting was then swept up by the “art informel furor,” which expresses the shock and imitation of the informel concept introduced in Japan. This trend of thought was passed on in the “anti-art” of the 1960s, leading to the mono-ha, a Japanese art style often compared to Western minimalism. Oil painting resurfaced in the 1980s as “new painting”; avant-garde was discarded for commercial art, and artists joined forces with various subcultures. No one seemed to realize that this was the equivalent of War Paintings, yet such is the way oil painting has been used over the years.

The Japanese art world rids itself swiftly of old trends as soon as something new is imported. Rendering the past abstract is no different from abandoning the future. Yet many artists continue to create and exhibit works in their unique style, resisting the sway of passing trends. Nevertheless, turning one’s back on reality or, conversely, losing one's identity by giving into reality, is paramount to relinquishing one’s freedom. Contemporary art involves conducting various experiments and breaking away from the concepts that bind, while constantly struggling with the present.

The resulting work can also be considered a self-portrait.　Exhibiting nonstop since the early 1990s, Yasuki was driven by the desire to produce art in her homeland, perhaps due to frequent relocations overseas during her childhood. She continues to paint pictures in which the juxtaposition of an Oriental sense and the embedded perspective of one replanted from West to East wrestle with the actual landscape.

Perhaps Yasuki could better be described as a flaneur rather than a foreigner in a foreign land. Seiki Kuroda could also be labeled as such a vagabond, one who relocated oil painting from France to Japan. Oil painting was imported into Japan naturally embodying a Western perspective. Yasuki feels the need to deconstruct the Western perspective integral to her own being, and incorporate techniques that existed before oil paintings even came into being. Integrating these premodern techniques enables Yasuki’s method of painting to gain proximity to the underlying truth.

Although oil painting is her passion, Yasuki holds a deep interest in the tabooed dialogue concerning video images and Nihon-ga, Japanese-style painting. Yasuki’s works continue to imbue the “Here and Now,” defying the conventional framework of oil painting, further emphasizing the concept that modern art is the equivalent of a self-portrait. Up-close confrontation with Masako Yasuki’s paintings equals interaction with the intangible present. They bring forth a truth from which we cannot escape, because Masako Yasuki’s paintings are nothing less than portraits of ourselves.

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