YOD Gallery is delighted to present “Qualia”, our first solo exhibition of Yuki Nagasawa (b.1989).

Yuki Nagasawa focuses on the essence of materials, to unearth new ways of presenting things, and further, new ways to see the world. “As a child, I often felt sadness and loneliness that I can not fully explain. I would play with discarded newspaper in my home, bundling it into balls, and this repetitive action brought me comfort.” These lingering childhood memories have become the root of her work. For a child anything and everything is interesting, because they see it for the first time, and every day is filled with discoveries. Nagasawa aims to look at objects that surround her as if seeing them for the first time, and then manipulate them in unexpected ways to create her art.

During her time at university, Nagasawa recalled her childhood play with newspaper, and started to incorporate it in her art to communicate the properties of the material to others. Though she finds newspaper fascinating as a physical medium, she soon realized that viewers of her works could not shed their preconceived notions of the meaning of “newspaper” as a vehicle for information and societal structure. She laments that, although she was more concerned with highlighting the material and exploring her own inner world, “[her] work was interpreted in the context of journalism, and people assumed [she] wanted to highlight catastrophes and injustices.”

Through the reactions of others to her work, Nagasawa has come to realize that we unconditionally attach meanings and purpose for the objects around us. Her desire to shine the spotlight on the physical substance of these mundane objects gave rise to the “paradigm” series. She releases materials from their premeditated existence, breaking the paradigm to create artworks that suggest new ways of seeing the world. For this exhibition, Nagasawa has chosen pillow beads as her medium. The small styrene balls are normally hidden inside cushions, outside of our sight, and indeed, mind. By bringing to light things that are hidden, surprising avenues of expression emerge.

Through the process of creating and feedback of others, Nagasawa has also made the astute observation that we all sense the world in slightly different ways. In aesthetics and philosophy, the inner senses and perceptions, which arise in the mind of an individual, are referred to as ‘qualia’. For example, when asked to imagine ‘the redness of an apple’, each person will conjure in their mind a red apple, but this apple is bound to be slightly different from person to person. For Nagasawa, the fact that, ultimately, information can not be accurately shared between the minds of one another is fascinating, and yet she muses that there is also some sadness in this reality.

The “qualia” artwork series is a result of Nagasawa’s deep investigation of materials. She distances herself entirely from ‘function’, and uses her chosen medium to create installations that encompass a space, transforming the mundane material into extraordinary sceneries. For this exhibition, pillow beads threaded together, in addition to the shadows that the work casts, create a mysterious world within the gallery space. Through an installation without concrete motifs, Nagasawa hopes to conjure a place for open communication between observers, as well as between the observer and themselves. Please join us to see this exhibition in person.