Mare Fecunditatis

Yasue Maetake
Silverlens, Manila

About

    Clarity in Reductionism: Yasue Maetake’s Sculptural Bodies
    By Yayoi Shionoiri

     

    All successful life is

    Adaptable,

    Opportunistic,

    Tenacious,

    Interconnected, and

    Fecund.

    Understand this.

    Use it.

    Shape God.

    ~from Earthseed, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

     

    Mare Fecunditatis – resurrection (2025) by Yasue Maetake makes its presence known before me 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.  Organic matter, sealed by a combination of epoxy and urethane resin, covers this armature.  Upon closer inspection, the components of the organic matter reveal themselves: bits of bleached white and peach pink coral; animal bone and fossil shards; sea glass in shades of bottle green; lapis lazuli the color of saturated navy; cloudy green fluorite; grape purple raw amethyst; raw quartz of varying shades; alabaster and marble chunks; and seashell fragments.  Mare Fecunditatis seems like she could be exhibited either on a sandy beach or in a fabricated outdoor space. 

    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 Maetake’s creative volition, it might be difficult to determine whether Maetake’s work was excavated from the past or sent to us from the future.

    While Maetake has named Mare Fecunditatis after both a lunar mare in the eastern half of the moon and Japanese author Yukio Mishima’s tetralogy (1969–1971), I found myself instead reflecting upon Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia E. Butler.  Set in a speculative 2027 California, riddled by climate collapse and social disintegration, Butler’s novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who creates Earthseed—a belief system that is, at once, a mode of survival and a guiding vision, simultaneously articulating the brutality of Olamina’s present and offering an adaptive framework for an unknown future.  Earthseed allows Olamina and her community to find meaning in disaster—and, perhaps more significantly, to act to shape a new world, rather than merely endure the old one.  Olamina remarks that “[c]hange is ongoing.  Everything changes in some way—size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking… Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way.”  In this adaptive mode of survival, Olamina seems to be working through and acknowledging the contradictions of a belief system that is about both present and future, as she seeks to retain autonomy while reacting to external change.

    I see a similar negotiation in Maetake’s practice.  The sculptural bodies in this exhibition advance a lineage from Maetake’s past works while offering further clarity in her artistic method.  Maetake refers to the organic matter found in Mare Fecunditatis and her other 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. 

    Maetake describes her sculptural method as a process of reduction—a distillation in which excess is removed to reveal that which is fundamental.  To me, Maetake’s process echoes Olamina’s recognition that one is both an agent of, and deeply affected by, change.  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.

    Maetake’s creative action channels the accumulated energy of her materials to realize forms that speak across time.  Ultimately, Maetake’s sculptures feel like physical accumulations that result from a series of ongoing challenges—Maetake’s responses to chaos, randomness, and passivity.  Imbued with a constant fluctuation that is neither reactive nor inert, Maetake’s work oscillates between a solid state, based on the laws of physics, and an intimation that change is the only constant.  In this clarity, and in this commitment to shaping through subtraction, Maetake gives form to that which is timeless, and urgently, unmistakably timely.   

    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.

Clarity in Reductionism: Yasue Maetake’s Sculptural Bodies
By Yayoi Shionoiri

 

All successful life is

Adaptable,

Opportunistic,

Tenacious,

Interconnected, and

Fecund.

Understand this.

Use it.

Shape God.

~from Earthseed, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

 

Mare Fecunditatis – resurrection (2025) by Yasue Maetake makes its presence known before me 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.  Organic matter, sealed by a combination of epoxy and urethane resin, covers this armature.  Upon closer inspection, the components of the organic matter reveal themselves: bits of bleached white and peach pink coral; animal bone and fossil shards; sea glass in shades of bottle green; lapis lazuli the color of saturated navy; cloudy green fluorite; grape purple raw amethyst; raw quartz of varying shades; alabaster and marble chunks; and seashell fragments.  Mare Fecunditatis seems like she could be exhibited either on a sandy beach or in a fabricated outdoor space. 

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 Maetake’s creative volition, it might be difficult to determine whether Maetake’s work was excavated from the past or sent to us from the future.

While Maetake has named Mare Fecunditatis after both a lunar mare in the eastern half of the moon and Japanese author Yukio Mishima’s tetralogy (1969–1971), I found myself instead reflecting upon Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia E. Butler.  Set in a speculative 2027 California, riddled by climate collapse and social disintegration, Butler’s novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who creates Earthseed—a belief system that is, at once, a mode of survival and a guiding vision, simultaneously articulating the brutality of Olamina’s present and offering an adaptive framework for an unknown future.  Earthseed allows Olamina and her community to find meaning in disaster—and, perhaps more significantly, to act to shape a new world, rather than merely endure the old one.  Olamina remarks that “[c]hange is ongoing.  Everything changes in some way—size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking… Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way.”  In this adaptive mode of survival, Olamina seems to be working through and acknowledging the contradictions of a belief system that is about both present and future, as she seeks to retain autonomy while reacting to external change.

I see a similar negotiation in Maetake’s practice.  The sculptural bodies in this exhibition advance a lineage from Maetake’s past works while offering further clarity in her artistic method.  Maetake refers to the organic matter found in Mare Fecunditatis and her other 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. 

Maetake describes her sculptural method as a process of reduction—a distillation in which excess is removed to reveal that which is fundamental.  To me, Maetake’s process echoes Olamina’s recognition that one is both an agent of, and deeply affected by, change.  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.

Maetake’s creative action channels the accumulated energy of her materials to realize forms that speak across time.  Ultimately, Maetake’s sculptures feel like physical accumulations that result from a series of ongoing challenges—Maetake’s responses to chaos, randomness, and passivity.  Imbued with a constant fluctuation that is neither reactive nor inert, Maetake’s work oscillates between a solid state, based on the laws of physics, and an intimation that change is the only constant.  In this clarity, and in this commitment to shaping through subtraction, Maetake gives form to that which is timeless, and urgently, unmistakably timely.   

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.

Installation Views

Works

Yasue Maetake
Lineal Fetishism II
2020
16148
2
assorted animal bones, assorted quartz, seashells, bronze, steel, brass, found stone, polyester resin and synthetic clay
22h x 29w x 14d in • 55.88h x 73.66w x 35.56d cm
-1
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Yasue Maetake
水引 [mizuhiki]
2023
16147
2
brass, brass foil, copper, verdigris, casted aluminum, glass beads, inlay rattan, polymer coated found tree branches, proprietary blend made from an epoxy embedded seashell, assorted quartz, coral, crab shell, and lobster shell
9.5l x 8.5w x 28h in • 24.13l x 21.59w x 71.12h cm
-1
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Yasue Maetake
Triton's Flute
2024
16146
2
Polymer coated found tree branches, verdigris, alloys of silver and copper, steel, brass, copper leaf, seashell, epoxy resin, and proprietary blend made from an epoxy mixture of seashells with seaglass, coral, lobster shells, ground marble
21h x 8w x 12d in • 53.3h x 20.3w x 30.5d cm
-1
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Yasue Maetake
Mare Fecunditatis - resurrection
2025
16145
2
steel, urethane resin, proprietary compound made from epoxy, coral, seashell, fossil, animal bone, lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade, amethyst, blue quartz, green fluorite, red jasper, rose quartz, alabaster, soap stone, sea glass, and marble
23h x 90w x 24d in • 58.4h x 228.6w x 61d cm • 165 lbs
-1
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Yasue Maetake
Primordial Soup
2023-2025
16144
2
casted aluminum, oak, epoxy coated plexiglass, polyurethane coated kozo-washi, casted polyurethane resin, driftwood, found steel chain, and proprietary blend made from an epoxy mixture of carved animal bones, seashells, coral, fossils, alabaster, sea glass, and ground marble, red jasper, jade, rose quartz, amethyst, blue quartz, green fluorite, and turquoise.
59h x 26w x 27d in • 149.9h x 66w x 68.6d cm
-1
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Yasue Maetake
Neuro Estuary
2025
16142
2
steel, urethane resin, urethane foam, chrome pigment, casted zamak alloy, proprietary compound made from epoxy, coral, seashell, fossil, animal bone, lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade, amethyst, blue quartz, green fluorite, red jasper, rose quartz, alabaster, soap stone, sea glass, and marble
69h x 40w x 32d in • 175.3h x 101.6w x 81.3d cm • 60 lbs
-1
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Yasue Maetake
不知火 [shiranui]
2023
16149
2
casted aluminum, brass, gold leaf, proprietary blend made from an epoxy embedded seashell, coral, assorted quartz, alabaster, glass beads, animal bone, fossil and ground marble
6.5l x 5w x 37.5h in • 16.51l x 12.7w x 95.25h cm
-1
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Yasue Maetake
Ceremonial Delta II
2025
16140
2
oak, camel bone, proprietary compound made from epoxy, coral, seashell, fossil, animal bone, lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade, amethyst, blue quartz, green fluorite, red jasper, rose quartz, alabaster, soap stone, sea glass, and marble
33h x 28w x 12d in • 83.8h x 71.1w x 30.5d cm • 11 lbs
-1
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Yasue Maetake
Mare Fecunditatis - fetus
2025
16143
2
steel strut channel, aluminum, urethane resin, proprietary compound made from epoxy, coral, seashell, fossil, bone, lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade, amethyst, blue quartz, green fluorite, red jasper, rose quartz, alabaster, sea glass, and marble
8h x 40w x 7.5d in • 20.3h x 101.6w x 17.8d cm • 12 lbs
-1
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Yasue Maetake
Ceremonial Delta I
2025
16141
2
oak, casted aluminum, proprietary compound made from epoxy, coral, seashell, fossil, animal bone, lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade, amethyst, blue quartz, green fluorite, red jasper, rose quartz, alabaster, soap stone, sea glass, and marble
30h x 20w x 8d in • 76.2h x 50.8w x 20.3d cm • 5 lbs
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