Keisuke Yamamoto

“fertile land”

untitled 2007 oil on canvas 53 × 41 cm ©︎ Keisuke Yamamoto

Keisuke Yamamoto creates drawings, paintings, and wooden sculptures. His works consist of trees, plants, fungi, and small fairy-like dolls formed by organic lines joined to realize a single form. The divisions allow our eyes to freely wander over the flat surface, filled with colored spaces that resemble flowers and insects, serve as the sky, or an enormous forest that is home to hidden creatures.
The sculptures also resemble items from a forest, allowing the impression to spread and pervade the gallery. Carved from camphor wood, it was originally covered in oil paint, however, a match was struck and it was burnt only to become part of a series that focuses on original materials.
All works compare beginning and now in complicated forms that melt together in an intimate motif. “Creating art involves wandering in a bottomless world. Having realized that, I must include that in my work,”
Yamamoto said. True to his words the works include unseen aspects and exist as fragments of a world of uncertainty.

The exhibition features five new paintings and wooden sculptures, some measuring nearly two-meters tall. The exhibition title fertile land relays his thoughts about the creative process; all the experiences in daily life are absorbed by the rich soil, for the next creation of the works. The giant wooden sculptures, one of his latest endeavors, incorporate a variety of motifs, which may reflect his spiritual side.