Yuko Nishikawa: Aki-Zakura
September 24 to December 2
Opening reception: September 24, 11am to 5pm
"Aki-Zakura is an installation of mobiles made with paper pulp clay I formulate from used paper collected from artists and photographers in my Brooklyn studio building. These mobiles are lightweight and airy, and make slow turns in response to us when we walk by them and stir the air. The rich colors and the oatmeal-cookie like textures are particular to the process I use to make this air dry clay. The colors come directly from the colors of the donated paper, there are no added paints or pigments. To produce additional colors, I mix multiple papers the way I would mix paints." Yuko Nishikawa
About Yuko Nishikawa
Yuko Nishikawa creates fantastical environments with colorful, textural lively forms using a hands-on, exploratory approach to make paintings, lighting, mobiles and sculptures in a variety of mediums including clay, wire, fabrics, as well as repurposed materials such as recycled paper and used eyewear lenses. Her work reflects her accumulative experiences in architecture, restoration, interior and furniture design, crafts and engineering. Growing up in a small seaside town just south of Tokyo, Japan, she received her B.F.A. in Interior Design from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in 2002.
Her work has evolved and expanded beyond her earlier ceramic sculptures. Highlights include a project during quarantine where she painted one painting per day for one hundred days, window displays with mobiles and paintings for French fashion brand Sandro’s 52 world-wide stores, ceramic lighting and sculpture installation Sporarium at Friends Artspace in Arlington, VA, vessel and plant exhibition Obscure Plant Club at Tula House in Brooklyn, NY, and the immersive mobile installation Memory Functions in one of The Brooklyn Home Company’s eco-friendly condominiums in Brooklyn.
She currently works in her studio in the industrial area in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, which she built out with friends utilizing demolished materials found in the building. She named this space Forest: a place where things grow and things decay to nourish new lives, and where people wonder and discover something new. In this space, for four years, she hosted the monthly Salon at Forest, a gathering and conversation of creative minds, which has been on pause since the beginning of the pandemic.
