Adamson Gallery is pleased to present Ku, an exhibition of new work by Virginia-based artist Yuriko Yamaguchi. The word "ku" in Japanese has an ambiguous meaning. Most literally, it translates to 'sky' or 'space' but embodies both the emptiness and fullness of those things. Yamaguchi works with wire, cast resin and other unconventional materials to create striking sculptural pieces that are larger than life and appear to their viewers as miracles of construction-minuscule elements are held in place by tiny wires which are twisted to form remarkable sculptures, transforming the space of the gallery. 

Yamaguchi's pieces illustrate the artist's extraordinarily close and complex relationship with her materials. Because she does not work with traditional or conventional elements, each sculpture represents a series of adaptations and choices, during which industrial supplies like wiring and tubing are given an entirely new function. Traces of process are very much evident in the finished product; for a series of prints also on exhibit, Yamaguchi stated, "They, too, are new discoveries made through spontaneous acts of experimenting with various materials and processes...My focus was how to transform these materials to create a new visual substance."

The installations are compelling in that they embody a series of paradoxes: organic and synthetic, ethereal and bodily, fabricated and evolved. Perhaps the closest analogy for her work is the figure of the cyborg, which is simultaneously exactly as and nothing like human. 

This transitory or liminal status is a motif that underscores much of Yamahuchi's work and is perhaps made most explicit in a piece entitled Bubble in Light, (2008) part of a larger series that explores the ephemeral phenomenon of bubbles, which the artist notes are a "good metaphor for life itself." In order to make this piece, Yamaguchi worked with many different materials and used small lightbulbs as part of the sculpture, noting that this "creates luminosity not only in feeling but also in emotion."

Yuriko Yamaguchi was born in Osaka, Japan but has lived and worked in the United States since the early 1970s. Her work has been exhibited all over the world and has been collected by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the National Museum of American Art.  She is also on the faculty of the Studio Art program at George Washington University.

For more information, please contact Laurie Adamson or Erin Boland at (202) 232-0707.