Yuka Namekawa is known for her simple and eloquent expression of the figure. The burly and humorous figure is sitting alone, standing against the wall, and sitting straight with gathering round. Those figures resemble the life of city dwellers (including the viewers of course), and she well expresses such attraction of people’s movement in everyday life. She had continued the style for about 10 years from 90s, which seems long term for a career of such a young artist. It was from 2007 to 2008 when her style was begun to be changed. She locked the figures into the frosted glass and also created the work by the permeable resin, which belongs more closely to flat works rather than sculptures. Once the card is turned the artist starts to quickly turn other card as well. However, the definitive change was occurred at London, where she moved in 2008 and still stayed in the following year dispatched from the Agency for Cultural Affair as an emerging artist. It was creation of works without figures. Though the figure of her works had once become blurred inside the frosted glass, she had never created the works without it so far.

What replaced the figures was the building-like work made of cubes of resin. For example, in a work entitled “I had my whole life ahead of me” created in 2010, semitransparent cubes were piled up, remaining a hollow at the center. Though we might make different interpretation on this work after experiencing the huge earthquake, this was made before it. What appears in front of us is the space without figures with light coming through it. It is not what we should confront identifying with by our humor and other feelings but is “something” which can be captured both positively and negatively. On the other hand, as the title implies we may perceive a sign of life in this work. It is as if the figure created by the artist in the past is now standing with us confronting the pile and the emptiness inside. The exhibition title “innocence” stands for guiltless, ingenuous, and harmless. The form of piled up polyethylene cubes and its space allow us to be reminded of various things, and that will be the real pleasure of art. This exhibition will be the first time after Namekawa’s return to Japan to exhibit her works from figure sculptures and works of semitransparent resin to recent three-dimensional works of cubes. Viewers may see the transition of her attitude and the change of the relationship between the artist and viewers.

Toshio Kondo / Art Front Gallery