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Sachigusa Yasuda
at theBLANC

by Jonathan Goodman, January 27, 2025

Sachigusa Yasuda is an interdisciplinary artist whose show at theBLANC is a definitive exhibition of new work.The artist’s sense of color stood out as an especially well-considered effort. Yasuda’s mother sewed and mended with thread as a household effort but the artist herself uses these techniques as a way of making memorable abstractions, in a manner that recalls the New York School, along with the older tradition of sewing.

 

As indicated, the artist’s sense of hue dominated this show. Both sides of the works are meant to be looked at, one orientation is genuinely the front side, but the back panel has considerable meaning as well: the threads pass through to the back of the work, where their more chaotic, anarchic arrangement results in an unbounded visual experience. At the same time, the arrangement of the works, shown along wide aisles encouraging both a frontward and a backward link, gives some contemporaneity to art made with traditional craft means.

 

The threads also hang, draping to the floor. This adds volume to the artist’s statement, and since the individual pieces are hanging on wire spanning wall to wall, it is not wrong to see the individual works as approaches to sculpture–the wires supporting the single works make it possible, even needed, to appreciate the works as three dimensional. If we extend our sense of Yasuda’s space further, we might even call the show an installation.

 

Beyond the notion of beauty, two other main themes are present: the notion of a textual reading as many of the works include letters that make up words that can for their literary meaning; and by implication, the very important subject of women’s art, made via traditionally female means. The words indicate the daily schedule of women, taken from the answers to questionnaires sent to women living in several states and in Japan. The use of female-oriented art has been used for at least half a century in New York City indeed, such art is now taken up by men, for example, the British born Oliver Herring, now working in America.

 

The texts in Yasuda’s work cover a wide range of sources. The Mothers' Daily Schedule, though, build a scaffolding with which we can see how a woman might spend time during the day. But even the letters are regularly subsumed within the genre of visual art; their shapes, which have different colors, are abstracted to some extent, often losing a bit of readerly comprehension since they submit to an overall design. The lettering style, a kind of blocked-out print in capital letters, is regularly used. It reflects Italian conceptual artists. Alighiero Boetti’s use of sewing made by refugee women in Afghanistan. And inevitably, Yasuda requires us to notice her assiduous patience in working with difficult material such as string. But the meaning remains both linked to language and visual. 

 

The reader can see this take place in any paintings she wishes to study. The loosely draped white linen backdrops for the works of art can be viewed as a white wall for the particulars of each image. Presented in linear fashion across the floor, not vertically but from wall to wall, there is also an allusion to clothes drying. It is a charming exhibition until you realize that this is sewing done to advance art, by a woman who was new to America. Both the action and the geography are bound to present its suggestions.

 

Since when did a thread work distinctively assert a social meaning while making its point in accordance with a traditionally female vocation? In fact,this sort of work and also art has been going on for some time (perhaps its political edge has been softened), in that sewing has become a part of current art practice. Yasuda got her first MFA from the Tokyo University of Arts; but she has also recently received a second MFA from Queens College in New York City. Today we wonder what Americans would say facing fine work defined and made real by a very traditional, gender-oriented practice. Even so, we cannot assert with complete ease that Yasuda is delivering strong assertions for the sake of women; in its beauty, her work looks back to sewing’s traditional use in making clothing. But Yasuda’s art is also firmly oriented toward the creation of something memorably contemporary, supported by earlier work coming from gifted conceptual artists. The list of women’s working habits is there, easily read by everyone and permanently a part of the piece's design. But it seems clear that art that is socially aware works best when we visit its imagery first and then address the argument.  Words and images can be opponents, and sometimes there is no answer to the debate. 

 

Fortunately, Yasuda understands the conflict well, and has made wonderful art as a result. The work is both beautiful and pointed.

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Mothers’ Daily Schedule, 2023-2024, found textile, thread, embroidery thread, yarn, clothespins, wire
dimensions variable. Image courtesy of theBLANC.

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Fragmentation #4 ( left side) and #5 (right side), 2024, plaster, found textile, thread, embroidery thread, yarn

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