Tokyo-based artist Katsutoshi Yuasa’s work has been shown widely around the world, and is currently exhibited in London, New York and Berlin. Flux consists of monolithic woodcuts never before seen in Hong Kong. The exhibition explores the fundamental theme of nature in the artist’s works and is curated in two sections; the first explores nature in its moving, unstable force and the second in man-made environments or artificial interventions in nature. Although these are themes that have preoccupied Yuasa for much of his career, they have gained significance in light of the traumatic natural disaster on 11th March 2011 in Japan. Beneath the visually romantic images, the show reveals an elegiac technique that portrays not so much a pessimistic but almost a mournful understanding and perception of man and nature in today’s society.

Yuasa’s methodology is a painstaking ritual of refinement to reach the crystallization of expression. At its inception each woodcut arises from a photograph, either found or the artist’s original work - which is subsequently manipulated electronically to become a monochromatic image. Thereafter, not unlike an alchemist the image is transmuted using a traditional Japanese woodblock printing technique (Japanese: moku hanga) that dates back to the Edo period of the 17th century. This meticulously intense process is a prosaic purification through labour - with each cut of wood revealing the narrative that lies beyond the surface. Lastly the work is printed by hand using a baren, a disc like device with a knotted handle for this specific purpose.

On his practice Yuasa states “Carving a wood block is neither a copy of a photograph nor a record of my experience. The carving process is like a journey that sheds light on places of the world…The essence of printmaking is how to visualise the relationship between the subjective memory of the individual and the objective moment of the captured event.”

Image: © Katsutoshi Yuasa, Artify Gallery