ABOUT: Yasue Maetake's approach to art hinges on her appreciation of liminal spaces, connecting reductive materialism with spirituality. Her sculptures, crafted with what she calls terrestrial materials such as animal bones, aquatic objects, fossils, quartz, resin, metal and glass, hint at a speculative future and question as to whether somaesthetics become what humans long for. Evoking structure and nature in form, Maetake’s sculptures embody physical syncretism, emphasizing the alchemical, immaterial qualities of the spatial and visual that lie in the ambiguity of the nonrepresentational character: manmade, natural, or divine?
BIO: Yasue Maetake is a Tokyo-born New York based artist, originally trained in glass engraving in Japan, the Czech Republic, and Germany before moving to New York City. Her work has been exhibited at numerous national and international institutions such as Espacio 1414 at the Berezdivin Collection, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Queens Art Museum, New York; 10th Sonsbeek, Arnhem, Netherlands; and ASU Art Museum, Arizona, amongst others. Solo exhibitions include Fons Welters, Amsterdam, The Chimney, New York, Microscope, New York, and Nina Johnson, Miami, and others. Maetake’s work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine and reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, ArtAsiaPacific, FlashArt, amongst others. Maetake was named one of “20 international women advancing the field of sculpture” by Artsy, is a recipient of the NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture, and she also completed a residency in the studio of El Anatsui in Ghana sponsored by a research grant from the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan. Yasue Maetake earned her MFA from Columbia University in New York.