Megumi Yuasa, installation view, Gomide&Co, São Paulo, 2024
2024. Megumi Yuasa
Megumi Yuasa, who began making ceramic sculpture in 1964, has not held a solo exhibition since 1998. The Japanese-Brazilian artist, born in São Paulo in 1938, has recently regained attention amid a resurgence of research on the Asian diaspora in Brazil, which has the largest community of Japanese descent outside Japan. This comeback show presented works made mainly between the 1970s and ’90s, along with a few produced recently. These pieces were accompanied by a handful of small black-and-white photographs from the ’70s, depicting kiln firing, exhibitions, and a rare domestic scene. All the sculptures were presented on a central platform, forming a kind of abstract landscape, like a cultivated forest. Incorporating materials such as concrete, metal, glass, bone, and acrylic in the pure traditions of Japanese ceramics is read as a radical move, showcasing Yuasa’s posture toward a comforting integration of things always subject to a mineral return, placing the ceramist as someone who dialogues with earth’s most elemental aspects.
Central to the exhibition, the sculpture Teatro do absurdo (Theater of the Absurd), ca. late 1980s, reveals Yuasa’s relations with Kabuki. The work features a robust arch-shaped volume, like a cutout stone whose core was hollowed to serve as a stage for a surreal scene: a small hand reaching out to touch a breast positioned beside a protruding tongue marked by a cross-shaped pattern of rhythmic perforations. While the entire sculpture is rendered in black, the anthropomorphic elements are highlighted in red and blue, flanked by abstract designs in relief along the thick frame. The finish of the glazed ceramic sculpture resembles that of patinated bronze, which is also the case in several other works, such as Árvore (Tree), 1980, and Elmo (Helmet), 1985, which recall props for a theater play. In Kabuki, this kind of visual trick is called keren.
In Kabuki, hanamichi, translated as “flower path,” refers to a walkway where pivotal scenes also happen beyond the central stage. At the visitors’ entrance, the works were gathered on a large plateau pitched slightly above waist height, gradually changing this observational relation while gallerygoers wandered up and down a long ramp around it, referring to the dynamic Japanese scenographic tradition. Pieces that would usually be displayed on pedestals, such as Pedra fundamental (Cornerstone), ca. 1990s, could thus be placed directly onto the platform. As viewers walked up the surrounding incline, they encountered works positioned at an intermediate level, and finally, when the floor reached the height of the platform, they were confronted with the show’s largest works. These spatial operations emphasize Yuasa’s observation of a fictive universe where hanging ceramics and orbiting planets share the same material and energetic essence.
Another Kabuki technique employed in the show was chūnori, in which characters are lifted into midair by wires to simulate flight. This sense of suspension is echoed in pieces such as Ar (Air), 1999–2022, where two small, gray, cloudlike forms connected by a long brass bar float high above, suspended from the ceiling by thin wires. A similar effect is achieved in Nuvem III (Cloud III), 2024, a white-glazed ceramic cloud with dilated pores, highlighting its hollow, lightweight nature. A less theatrical but no less ingenious formal solution for the levitation of masses could be seen in an untitled work from the early ’90s, a floating horizontal body attached to the upper part of a glass plate fitted at the base by two ceramic hills. Yuasa uses a similar solution in other works that evoke mountainous and cloudy landscapes, one of his signature motifs.
Some of Yuasa’s works, bringing together mineral durability and the transience of flora, are vessels that house living plants, such as the small succulents that inhabit a hole at the base of Do outro lado da ponte (Across the Bridge), ca. 1980s. The coexistence of these disparate elements reflects Yuasa’s belief that pottery is a cosmological practice, connecting us to the universe and showing the common origin of matter and energy.
Text originally published in Artforum, vol. 63, no. 4, December 2024
Central to the exhibition, the sculpture Teatro do absurdo (Theater of the Absurd), ca. late 1980s, reveals Yuasa’s relations with Kabuki. The work features a robust arch-shaped volume, like a cutout stone whose core was hollowed to serve as a stage for a surreal scene: a small hand reaching out to touch a breast positioned beside a protruding tongue marked by a cross-shaped pattern of rhythmic perforations. While the entire sculpture is rendered in black, the anthropomorphic elements are highlighted in red and blue, flanked by abstract designs in relief along the thick frame. The finish of the glazed ceramic sculpture resembles that of patinated bronze, which is also the case in several other works, such as Árvore (Tree), 1980, and Elmo (Helmet), 1985, which recall props for a theater play. In Kabuki, this kind of visual trick is called keren.
In Kabuki, hanamichi, translated as “flower path,” refers to a walkway where pivotal scenes also happen beyond the central stage. At the visitors’ entrance, the works were gathered on a large plateau pitched slightly above waist height, gradually changing this observational relation while gallerygoers wandered up and down a long ramp around it, referring to the dynamic Japanese scenographic tradition. Pieces that would usually be displayed on pedestals, such as Pedra fundamental (Cornerstone), ca. 1990s, could thus be placed directly onto the platform. As viewers walked up the surrounding incline, they encountered works positioned at an intermediate level, and finally, when the floor reached the height of the platform, they were confronted with the show’s largest works. These spatial operations emphasize Yuasa’s observation of a fictive universe where hanging ceramics and orbiting planets share the same material and energetic essence.
Another Kabuki technique employed in the show was chūnori, in which characters are lifted into midair by wires to simulate flight. This sense of suspension is echoed in pieces such as Ar (Air), 1999–2022, where two small, gray, cloudlike forms connected by a long brass bar float high above, suspended from the ceiling by thin wires. A similar effect is achieved in Nuvem III (Cloud III), 2024, a white-glazed ceramic cloud with dilated pores, highlighting its hollow, lightweight nature. A less theatrical but no less ingenious formal solution for the levitation of masses could be seen in an untitled work from the early ’90s, a floating horizontal body attached to the upper part of a glass plate fitted at the base by two ceramic hills. Yuasa uses a similar solution in other works that evoke mountainous and cloudy landscapes, one of his signature motifs.
Some of Yuasa’s works, bringing together mineral durability and the transience of flora, are vessels that house living plants, such as the small succulents that inhabit a hole at the base of Do outro lado da ponte (Across the Bridge), ca. 1980s. The coexistence of these disparate elements reflects Yuasa’s belief that pottery is a cosmological practice, connecting us to the universe and showing the common origin of matter and energy.
Text originally published in Artforum, vol. 63, no. 4, December 2024
Megumi Yuasa, Teatro do absurdo, late 1980s, glazed ceramics, 44 x 53 x 15 cm
Megumi Yuasa, Árvore, 1980, acrylic on glazed ceramics, 60 x 15 x 12 cm
Megumi Yuasa, Elmo, 1985, glazed ceramics, 26 x 28 x 14 cm
Megumi Yuasa, Pedra fundamental, 1990s, glazed ceramics, 18 x 40 x 34 cm
Megumi Yuasa, Ar, 1999-2022, iron, brass and aluminium, 17 x 14 x 205 cm
Megumi Yuasa, Nuvem III, 2024, glazed ceramics, 34 x 51.5 x 34.5 cm
Megumi Yuasa, Do outro lado da ponte, 1980s, glazed ceramics, iron and aluminium, 169 x 67 x 67 cm