TEFAF New York 2025

Axel Vervoordt is pleased to participate in the 2025 edition of TEFAF New York, which takes place at the Park Avenue Armory from May 9 - 13 with an invitation-only preview on May 8. You can find us at stand 206.

TEFAF New York 2025

Material, chance, and the nature of art: Yuko Nasaka and Shiro Tsujimura

Revolutionary innovation, material freedom, and challenging traditions to create something new. These are integral characteristics in the work of two pioneering Japanese artists, Shiro Tsujimura and Yuko Nasaka.

For the 2025 edition of TEFAF New York, Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present a duo exhibition demonstrating how these avant-garde artists have defied tradition to create entirely new artistic languages that rely on innovation and experimentation.

Despite their differences in medium and style, Tsujimura and Nasaka have explored texture, materiality, and abstraction throughout their long careers. They deeply engage with surface texture, organic forms, and surprising art-making techniques. Both are fiercely independent artists who share remarkable similarities, and this dialogue opens unique perspectives in the spirit of their work.

Self-taught artist Shiro Tsujimura (°Gose, 1947) is renowned for his expressive, rustic ceramics that transform and transcend contemporary ideas about Japanese pottery’s tradition and formalities. His creations have an almost physical, bodily presence while remaining intense, yet silent. Embracing Zen aesthetics, Tsujimura’s practice embraces the unpredictable nature of clay and firing techniques. His life and work reflect a philosophy where the artist's interaction with materials is direct and unmediated, allowing natural elements to influence the outcome.

This has much in common with artists active in the Gutai Art Association, such as Yuko Nasaka and others, who pushed the boundaries of artmaking through raw material exploration to create something new. Nasaka (°Osaka, 1938) was a prominent female member of the Gutai movement during its existence. She is celebrated for her intricate, machine-like relief paintings with rhythmic patterns. She joined the avant-garde group in 1963 and started experimenting with technology and cutting-edge industrial materials. Her modular series of square wooden panels coated with a thin layer of glue, plaster, and clay were placed on a homemade mechanical turntable. She finished the panels with a fine spray of car lacquer, misted with an auto-factory air compressor. Her work balances the harsh rationality of industrialisation with the purity of Japanese tradition and meditation.

The dialogue between Shiro Tsujimura and Yuko Nasaka embodies a uniquely Japanese sensibility that upends tradition and sparks innovation. The exhibition demonstrates how the artists physically engage with their materials in pursuit of freedom. Over many decades, they have achieved the challenging goal: to create independent work—authentic and self-confident—that is entirely their own.