Naoyo Fukuda: A Spoonful of Salvation

Kanda & Oliveira is pleased to announce the exhibition "A Spoonful of Salvation" by Naoyo Fukuda, which will be held from May 18 to June 29.

 

Naoyo Fukuda is known as “an artist of letters and words”, as she creates works using stationary items that have been around her since childhood, such as erasers, pencils, rulers, manuscript paper, as well as handkerchiefs and books. Simultaneously, she has published several volumes of palindrome poetry in which the text, in Japanese characters, is the same whether read from the beginning or the end.

 

In addition to the installation “Things Washed Ashore / Seaside Cave”, a sculpture of more than 6,000 erasers, this exhibition also features works from her series “The Winged”, an ensemble of books with folded-in pages, along with “Souls of Books”, a piece made from bookmarks that have been loosened to resemble cotton candy. Fukuda made full use of the building space, which she felt resembles a seaside cave or a large ship, to create a palindrome inspired by the gallery's location, as well as new series of works influenced by her dreams, titled “Dream Note / Tears in Sleeve / Fountain” that we will exhibit for the first time.

 

Fukuda says that in the process of erasing words and backgrounds, the eraser itself disappears, and becomes a gateway to "a place other than this world”. Sculpting these erasers “is not an act of shaping, but an act of cutting away and letting go of the form”, and the viewer can be immediately captivated by these works that question the meaning of presence and absence. Fukuda believes that beyond "a place other than this world" lies an endless ocean. Words are floating towards the shore as they come and go in waves.

 

In collaboration with (titles omitted): Yukiko Koide Presents, Switchback, Nakagawa Chemical Co., Ltd.

Fukuda says that art is about bringing to light the ephemeral shapes of things that will disappear or fade away. Among these shapes are the bed on which the artist read books as a child, a water cooling pillow she used when she had a fever, school chairs, boats, gravestones, letters and small white objects in the shape of swimming floaters. All are sculptures made from erasers, the number of which has been increasing with each exhibition, now reaching around 6320. The title of this artwork also reflects how the artist got inspired by the premises for this exhibition.

“There is a Japanese poem that depicts a sleeve decaying after wiping away tears. These works are paintings that mourn death. Each sleeve is swollen with tears. I drew the scene that I saw in a dream in a notebook after waking up, and then put it on paper and colored it to create the work. The process of coloring is a cleansing process for me. As the tears form and turn into a fountain from which plants grow, it shows the process of sadness as purification and expresses my hope for art”.

Artworks photo credit: Kanda & Oliveira, Mineo Sakata

Installation view photo credit: Munemasa Takahashi

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