Monastery with Labyrinth 迷宮のある僧院

On the face of a steel block about 70 centimeters high, grooves are cut in a geometric pattern with equal spaces between them. They look like a city or a labyrinthine ruin viewed from above. Yasuda produced figurative sculpture in his early period, but since his return to Japan in 1968 after about nine years of stay in Italy, he has worked exclusively on abstract sculptures that look like architectures, and more specifically, like cities and ruins. They are created from a rather objective, aerial viewpoint, and some of them have been given names of actual places in Italy the artist has visited. But the works themselves are totally devoid of friendliness or warmth associated with sentiments or memories, and are almost cold in their stoic tranquility. In this particular work from 1981, the cities, captured from an aerial viewpoint, are stoic and desolate, and without character; at the same time, they symbolize contemporary cities where, despite the inorganic and sterile outer appearance, a great number of people lead their complex daily lives.