Yuichi Saito
Yuichi Saito is fascinated by popular Japanese shows. At the workshop of Kobe Shu (Saitama), which he has been attending since 2002, he began graphic work around these television programs, methodically writing, in a broad gesture, the title of each of them. His drawings have since then reached a degree of visual abstraction of great intensity. More recently, he has undertaken work on the mo character of the hiragana alphabet: its repetitions reveal his emotional states. His work has been shown in the collections of the Museum of Everything, at MONA, in Tasmania, and during the closing exhibition of the maison rouge (France): L’envol ou Le rêve de voler. An important part of his work has been donated to the Centre Pompidou in 2021.
Yuichi Saito attends the art workshop for mentally handicapped adults in Kobo Shu, Saitama Prefecture. Since 2002, when he began his work, Saito has shown a sole interest in calligraphy and the production of written works, unlike many artists in the workshop who prefer painting.
Saito writes the titles of his favorite television shows: Pocket Monster, Doraemon, Stray Cops (a Japanese version of Miami Vice), TV Champion (etc.), methodically creating each work on the same day the TV show is broadcast. Although the drawings are consistent with the artist’s interests, they have recently reached a high degree of visual abstraction. More recently, he obsessively traces an alphabet solely composed of “mo”, whose repetitions reveal his emotional states.
From 2017 to 2018, Yuichi Saito was shown in the exhibition of the Museum of Everything at the MONA in Tasmania, then, in 2018, in the exhibition L’envol ou le rêve de voler at the Maison Rouge in Paris.
Preface : Raphaël Koenig.
Foreword : Christian Berst.
Catalog published to mark the exhibition In abstracto #2, from March 5th to May 30th, 2020.
