Yusuke Asai on Sentient Beings Dissolve
In his own words

“All life will dissolve.

Everything will change with time.

Plants are propelled to move with shifts in their environment; clouds change shape; the colour of the sky transforms moment to moment with each time of day. Even manmade things change sometimes more or less, slow or fast, no matter how strong and stable they appear. As an artist, I am interested in this phenomenon of “change” itself. I believe that life exists in “change”, as life force is brought into being. As everything inevitably changes, my work becomes a prayer, as I aspire to change, to become more sensitive to my environment just like plants and clouds do.

In this way, I understand the world deeper and deeper, and commune with the person who views my paintings.

Life goes round.
Small beings form the larger world.
The environment gives birth to all life.
Find beauty in an environment that you are accustomed to seeing.
Look at your world again and again for those insights.

The paintings in this exhibition are made from soil collected from diverse locales, and I see these paintings connected by the memories of places from where I dug out the soil. For instance, the soil from Hokkaido the northernmost region of Japan, and the soil from Okinawa the southernmost, are placed side by side. Or consider the soil from under a pitcher’s plate in a hyper-urban baseball ground, that lies next to the soil from a sacred shrine located so deep in the mountains, it can only be reached on foot.

How you see the paintings may be a little different from how I see them. How each person perceives an artwork is based on each one’s experience or circumstance. For those who view my paintings I hope that they transform you to find fresh perspectives in your daily environment.”

Yusuke Asai

11-14th Jan, 2024
Artisans’ Kala Ghoda, Fort, Mumbai