Named after a lunar mare, a large dark, basaltic plain in the eastern half of the moon, Mare Fecunditatis consists of six sculptures in Maetake’s distinct artistic method, advancing a lineage from her past works.

Maetake refers to the organic matter found in her sculptural works as “prima materia”, a proprietary blend of calcium, other minerals, polymers derived from marine organisms, animal bones, fossils, and various gemstones. This material is then finished by Maetake using stone-polishing techniques. In this way, Maetake is not merely an assembler of found objects; she is the creator of the very substance of her work. Her agency is evident not only in the creation of these material bodies but in what she allows to fall away from the raw material.

Mare Fecunditatis – resurrection (2025) makes its presence known before us in all of its 8-foot, 160- pound presence. A steel carriage, resembling the fossilized backbone of a prehistoric creature, lumbers horizontally and anchors the sculpture. Maetake’s other sculptural bodies in the exhibition also exude quiet, but powerful bearings. Some, like Primordial Soup (2023-2025) and Neuro Estuary (2025), stand vertically like protective sentinels, while others, like Ceremonial Delta I, Ceremonial Delta II (both 2025), and Mare Fecunditatis – fetus (2025), extend out like rhizomatic protrusions from the wall. Maetake’s sculptural bodies are simultaneously familiar and ever-so-slightly menacing. If not for the certainty of her creative volition, it might be difficult to determine whether Maetake’s work was excavated from the past or sent to us from the future.

Maetake describes her sculptural method as a process of reduction—a distillation in which excess is removed to reveal that which is fundamental. Maetake serves as an agent that is moved: an exploration to seek understanding of her materials, described by her as the “self-evident existence of the physical matter.” To that end, her work is both grounded in the present but directed towards a future not yet apparent.

– Yayoi Shionoiri

Yasue Maetake (b. 1973, Tokyo; lives and works in New York) is a Tokyo-born artist living and working in New York City. Her work has been exhibited at numerous national and international institutions such as Espacio 1414 at the Berezdivin Collection, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Queens Art Museum, New York; 10th Sonsbeek, Arnhem, Netherlands; and ASU Art Museum, Arizona, amongst others. Solo exhibitions include Fons Welters, Amsterdam, The Chimney, New York, Microscope, New York, and Nina Johnson, Miami, and others.

Maetake’s work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine and reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, ArtAsiaPacific, FlashArt, amongst others. Maetake was named one of “20 international women advancing the field of sculpture” by Artsy, is a recipient of the NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture, and she also completed a residency in the studio of El Anatsui in Ghana sponsored by a research grant from the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan. In summer 2024, Maetake’s essay centered on Eva Hesse will be published in Transatlantique Collection, Paris. Yasue Maetake earned her MFA from Columbia University in New York.