Pippy Houldsworth is delighted to present a body of new work by established Japanese artist Yuken Teruya, who is currently exhibiting at Saatchi Gallery.

Best known for his intricately cut bags, Teruya will manipulate an assortment of newspaper articles which document the political upheaval triggered by the economic crisis. ‘Sprouts’ will emerge from the surface of the newspapers, demonstrating how life continues to flourish despite the turbulence of the financial market.

Teruya will also continue his exploration of mass consumption by fabricating a new line of luxury shopping bags. Transforming the detritus of mass consumption into beautifully crafted works of art, Teruya uses unconventional materials in a way that elevates details often overlooked in everyday life.

Born in Okinawa, Japan in 1973, and currently based in New York, Yuken Teruya is renowned for his delicate yet powerful works that have captured the imaginations of collectors and curators worldwide.

As an island where the cultures of China and ancient Japan – as well as the cultures of modern day Japan and the USA – have mixed to form a unique hybrid society, Okinawa is a place that has greatly influenced Teruya and his work. His is an approach which, having lived in and between different cultures, seeks to explore and depict how combating ideologies interact.

Whilst he has recently begun to expand the limits of his practice into video installation, Yuken Teruya is most well-­‐ known for his intricate paper works. Fascinated by the potential for the creation of art from everyday objects, Teruya seeks to bring the artwork into the private sphere and encourage his viewers to contemplate it from an alternative perspective. This “uncovering [of] small metamorphosis in familiar objects” is, in his own words, “a psychological exercise” which allows the transformation of the routine into moments of significance, and leaves us more aware of the constant and unending alterations in our surroundings. This philosophy is embedded in an ultimate desire to elevate the details normally lost in everyday life, and to surprise the viewer through the manipulation of familiar and unexpected objects.

Notice Forest, 2000--2013, is a series perhaps most emblematic of Teruya’s extraordinary skill and deft for creative imagination. It depicts complex tree silhouettes, cut out of and suspended within paper shopping bags that form miniature dioramas of intricate beauty. The changing colours of the works, each produced from a different brand’s paper bag, reflect the changing seasons. Some trees, produced from the paper bags of fast-­-food chains – McDonald’s, Burger King and Krispy Kreme among them – cleverly transform public detritus destined for the rubbish bin into precious objects. Others, produced from the paper bags of luxury retailers including Tiffany & Co and Ralph Lauren, masterfully allude to the prized commercial goods whose place within the carrier they have usurped.

Whilst on an immediate level these works become political, suggesting a critique of industrial deforestation sustained to meet the world’s paper needs, the works are fundamentally an exploration of beauty, and an attempt to create something precious that can exist independent of context or assumptions. Teruya’s work, a unique mix of poetic creativity and social awareness, offers a rare glimpse of something amazing in the places we least expect it.

Yuken Teruya will be part of the ‘Paper’ show at the Saatchi Gallery, London scheduled for later this year. Since gaining his MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2001, Teruya has exhibited internationally at venues including PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Ueno Royal Art Museum, Tokyo, and the Sydney Biennale 2012. His work is represented in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Saatchi Gallery, London, and Seattle Art Museum.

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