NYAB Event - Mayumi Sarai Exhibition

Mayumi Sarai Exhibition

Lori Bookstein Fine Art

This event has ended.

Sarai’s process is incredibly labor-intensive. She has always been drawn to sculpture and the personal effort that is a necessary part of the craft. Beginning with a piece of found wood, she collects discarded branches and limbs that she herself, using Japanese chisels and tools, carves into massive numbers of smaller elements. Those elements are then built into much greater forms that are at once reflective of nature and at the same time, highly personal.

Despite the hardness of the wood, the artist’s work is incredibly dynamic. In Portrait of My Hair, Sarai’s hundreds of small orbs reflect the fluid movement of long hair, while the twisted lines and “active transliteration of a human gesture” found in Knot #2 show the dynamism of form. In Beginning, the three-dimensionality of Sarai’s works is even more emphatic, as the molecular–like elements seem to burst forth from the wall into the realm of the viewer.

While the artist’s continued interest in Japanese Buddhist sculpture and African tribal fetish and fertility sculpture are readily apparent in this body of work, there is also a strong utilitarian element to the work. Sarai’s forms suggest activities such as braiding hair, weaving baskets or sewing quilts. Once combined, Sarai’s naturalistic, biomorphic pieces achieve a spiritual quality and meditative emotional resonance that belie their laborious and methodical execution.