Thursday 5 May 2016

Masao Sasaki - Gallery Yamaki Fine Art - Motomachi - Kobe


Masao Sasaki's artwork titled: Overflowing Fire 

This current exhibition now on show at Gallery Yamaki Fine Art in Motomochi, Kobe is a very good one and the above artwork by Masao Sasaki  titled; Overflowing Fire is a very intriguing, not  only because of the way the artist has partially reduced the newspaper back towards valueless carbon but by using the stock exchange listing page for the front of the sculpture it tends to add a savvy touch to the object.

But beyond the philosophical diatribes that could take place either when viewing Masao's Overflowing Fire independently or in groups is this wonderful aesthetic of mere matter, its strange how such a praxis tool such as fire with its deconstruction of a objects form allows such sensitive hues of greys, to curl, break away and form water traces when the flames are extinguished, creating a kind of aesthetic weft of ironic visual poetry.

Masao's artworks like many artists who use fire often can create extremely beautiful artworks. For example; one only has to look at glass or ceramic  objects created from intense heat to see hues and tones that often tend to mesmerise ones senses and this artwork above has some of those aforementioned qualities. 

Although there is a darker memory that resonates from this particular artwork titled; Overflowing Fire and that is the Black Rain of Hiroshima  that one can partially witness due to the remnants of it at the Hiroshima Memorial Museum, whether the artist meant this to happen one doesn't know but the title itself tends to echo the misery caused by the Atomic Bomb and fires afterwards, its a bleak remembrance.

And maybe that's why these materialist artworks by Masao on exhibit at Gallery Yamaki Fine Art have such a tension, it pulls the audience in two extreme directions, by chance or deliberate it doesn't matter, its there in the gallery to experience and its a sensation well worth going to engage. So if your in MotoMachi Kobe please go and see this most interesting exhibition here is the link:http://www.gyfa.co.jp/index_Eng.htm


Atomic Black Rain link
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/outline/index.php?l=E&id=44