Eykyn Maclean was honored to present the first exhibition in the United States of internationally-renowned sculptor Kan Yasuda. The exhibition, open to the public, featured over twenty of the artist’s new sculptures.
Gallery partner Christopher Eykyn: “Having followed Kan’s career in Europe and Japan, we are delighted to have the opportunity of introducing his work to an American audience. Working together with Kan, we have selected a group of works that best represent this important artist at the height of his career. I know that Kan’s sculpture will resonate as powerfully here as it does in the rest of the world.”
Born in Japan in 1945, Yasuda has divided his time between Hokkaido, Japan and Pietrasanta, Italy for over forty years, and his work deftly merges the cultural traditions of East and West. Working in an abstract vocabulary of smooth surfaces and sensually rounded forms with antecedents in the sculpture of Brancusi and Arp, Yasuda’s sculpture possesses the meditative stillness and tranquillity that may call to mind eastern philosophy or religion, but for Yasuda it is the ability of art to connect with mankind in general that motivates his practice.
Yasuda’s painstaking technical process begins with the stone itself, which he sources from the famous Carrara quarries, near his studio in Pietrasanta. He chooses the marble carefully and carves his works entirely by hand. He works in a range of scales from the intimate to the monumental, imbuing each with a palpable presence that lingers in the minds of viewers long after their visual contact with the work.
A fully-illustrated catalogue accompanied the exhibition, with a newly commissioned essay by Peter Benson Miller, the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome. It is available for purchase through this website.