Earth Painting - Umbilical Cord 泥絵・へその木

ASAI Yusuke (1981- ), using soil, dust, leaves---substances of all kinds taken from everyday life---buries his surroundings under motifs of animals and plants charged with energy. His mud paintings, which he initially paints directly on a wall using soil and water and later washes off with water, are not “works” produced as the consequence of an action. Rather, they draw viewers’ attention to the process of “drawing” in dialogue with a space. The work displayed here Asai created in a live painting session held at this museum in 2011. To meet this museum’s condition for holding the session---that it be able to keep the work permanently in its collection---he painted on a panel, what was for him an entirely new undertaking. The art museum, for its part, can satisfy with permanency Asai’s prerequisite condition for exhibiting---that “the place of drawing be the place of showing.”