MEGUMI YUASA

Gomide&Co is pleased to announce the first solo show by Megumi Yuasa (São Paulo, 1938) at the gallery, which opens on August 22nd at 6 pm. The exhibition has its project conceived by the partnership between the artist Alexandre da Cunha, the architect Jaqueline Lessa (entre terras), and the researcher Rachel Hoshino, who also signs the critical essay. Having not exhibited individually since 1998, the artist will present at Gomide&Co an exhibition that combines works made since the end of the 1970s with some new works made in 2024.

Throughout his artistic production, Megumi has built up a language of his own, shaping sculptures that combine a variety of elements, such as clay, metals, filing, and oxides. A master in his field, the artist emphasizes the ceramists’ communion with the earth, arguing that everything around a work is part of it and will accompany it to infinity. It is precisely this dialogical relationship, always imbued with the artist’s philosophical and political discourse, that structures much of his works.

Megumi Yuasa began working with the visual arts in 1964, when he made his first ceramics. He then traveled with his partner Naoko Yuasa to the hinterland of Goias state, researching techniques and materials. In 1968, he held his first exhibition in Goiania and returned to São Paulo the following year. His work soon became recognized. In 1971, he attended the Escola Brasil for six months, at the invitation of the painter Luiz Paulo Baravelli (1942). In 1988, living in Itu, he started working at Cerâmica Aruan, Gilberto Daccache’s factory. At the end of 1988, the artist started working as a master ceramist in the factory, where he had a space where he modeled his pieces and taught the craft to the young workers who were making utilities.

Among the exhibitions he has participated in, we highlight the 13th and 14th editions of the Bienal de São Paulo (1975 and 1977, respectively); Laços do Olhar (2008), a group show at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo); and O Curso do Sol (2023), a group show curated by Yudi Rafael at Gomide&Co. In 2024, his work was part of the group show Tocar a Terra, curated by Rachel Hoshino as part of the program Diásporas Asiáticas at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake.

Megumi Yuasa’s exhibition takes place in the context of a Gomide&Co program that devotes special attention to the field of ceramics, taking as its compass the overcoming of distinctions established between the technique and other artistic languages with a view to affirming this production in the field of contemporary art. His imagined landscapes, including trees, clouds, seeds, and his so-called espássaros, will now compose the gallery’s exhibition space, taking on familiar and at the same time improbable forms, based on a unique exhibition design that presents his works without hierarchies. Having held his first exhibitions at the end of the 1960s, the artist arrives for this occasion with more than half a century of experience as a key figure in Brazilian sculpture. In view of his visual repertoire, it is also possible to perceive the breadth of his poetics, which crosses languages and constitutes his interdisciplinary discourse.