YUKI SAEGUSA

The scenes on Yuki SAEGUSA’s canvases stem from thoughts about ‘a place that exists in someone’s mind but nowhere in reality.’ Each meticulously depicted scene paradoxically reveals the uncertainties and ambiguities of personal daily experiences, subjective memories, and imagination. In the finely detailed landscapes, small animals with cartoonish forms from another world which represent projections of the artist and the audience are seen. SAEGUSA also uses cardboard and folding screens she has personally collected as supports for her paintings, which she describes as ‘objects that were once used and destined to be discarded’. She views the wrinkles and stains on these surfaces as the ‘memories of the materials (素材の記憶)’. By painting on them, she merges the unique memories of each material with her own thoughts and gestures, creating a unique scene that is ‘a place where there is no place.’

Gravity Moon (2023), painted with Japanese pigments on an old golden folding screen, explores the relationship between gravity and time. Surrounding the folding screen on the wall are 12 paintings from the series Black Hole Sun (2023–2024), symbolising the year, month, and day, arranged as if orbiting the screen. The interplay between the time-worn folding screen and the gravitational pull of the small ‘black holes’ organically intertwines within a single space. The golden ship anchored in the centre of the painting Not Even on Ship (2023), which shares the same title as the exhibition, is an icon that metaphorically represents the infinite possibilities of painting, continuing like an endless voyage. This encompasses the idea of materials reborn as supports, not confined to their given usage. With no fixed destination and no specific route to follow, SAEGUSA’s canvas becomes an endlessly explorable unknown world.