Yuko Nasaka

After the disasters of World War II, Japan underwent an industrial transformation during the 1960s, which spelled out the prospect of a prosperous future for the country. At that time, a new generation of artists, including Yuko Nasaka, joined the Gutai Art Association and started experimenting with technology and cutting-edge industrial materials. This continued a trend of using non-art materials from early the Gutai period, but also responded to the rapid industrialisation and mechanical proliferation emblematic of 1960s Japan, as well as to the artistic experiments with new materials in other parts of the world.

This belief infiltrated Nasaka’s art and her use of brightly hued car lacquer is a strong example of this philosophy. She tapped into that power and energy. She made art in the here and now. Her large relief work is composed of a modular series of square wooden panels coated with a thin layer of glue, plaster and clay, and placed on a homemade mechanical turntable. As the panel rotated, she used a palette knife to carve patterns into the material, a gesture she compared to working on a potter's wheel. She finished the panels with a fine spray of car lacquer, misted with an auto-factory air compressor. As if accumulating data or manufactured products, she then displayed the paintings in grids. Some were as large as the mural she created for her solo show at the Gutai Pinacotheca in 1964.

Although Nasaka followed a very traditional art education and made work that was strongly connected to the Japanese tradition of ceramics, her goal was never to restore a tradition—which she greatly respects—but rather to create something new, and thus give body to Gutai founder Jiro Yoshihara’s credo: “Do what no one has done before.”

Nasaka’s work strives to attain a perfect balance between the harsh rationality of industrialisation and the purity of Japanese tradition and meditation. Like a Japanese philosopher, she’s able to express profound thoughts with very simple means. At first glance it may seem slight, but upon deeper reflection, her works are anything but superficial. Nasaka manages to tell a universal story through ordinary things that reflect the moment that’s poised on the turnaround of the present.

Nasaka’s “moon landscapes” can be seen in that same spirit. They seem to be a direct reference to mankind’s attempt to make a first landing on the moon in the 1960s, although it was never her intention to imitate the moon. At around the same time, Yves Klein made his moonlike sponges, also without referring them to any specific moon. Although both artists most likely never met, they seem connected and shared the same fascinations that were “in the air” at the time.

Being one of the most prominent voices of Gutai’s last generation, Nasaka attached much more importance to the process of making art, than to its final result and meaning. Her work refuses to be penned in by any singular explanation. It may be interpreted in many different ways, whereby one view never dominates over another. It has no precise meaning, while at the same time it contains many meanings. It transcends the everyday and—in its openness—is connected to the very fundaments of being.

Everyone has their own interpretation of the work, based upon their own memories and perspectives, but the meaning generated by Nasaka’s circles is infinite and open to many possible interpretations. This quality is the essential quality of every true Gutai work. Openness of meaning can only be attained if an artist is able to set aside the ego and allow the interaction with matter itself to guide the process of creation. A Gutai artist does not have a preconceived idea of what exactly a work is going to look like or what it should mean. They let chance and the behaviour of the materials decide. Nasaka’s guided by the essential qualities of the materials she uses and by any number of small coincidences that cross her path. Like every genuine Gutai artist, she considers her role to be nothing more than the medium that allows matter to further express itself.