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Yuli Yamagata: Ghosts Don't Wear Watches

Past exhibition
October 30, 2024 - January 10, 2025
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • Press
  • Video
Overview
Yuli Yamagata Snooker at Night, 2024 Elastane, dyed elastane, silk, velvet, felt, silicone fiber, sewing thread, glue, anti-UV spray 82 5/8 x 55 1/8 x 4 inches (210 x 140 x 10 cm)
Yuli Yamagata
Snooker at Night, 2024
Elastane, dyed elastane, silk, velvet, felt, silicone fiber, sewing thread, glue, anti-UV spray
82 5/8 x 55 1/8 x 4 inches
(210 x 140 x 10 cm)

Anton Kern Gallery is pleased to announce the Brazilian artist Yuli Yamagata’s (b.1989,
São Paulo) third solo exhibition in New York. The artist’s latest exhibition, her most
ambitious to date, features new fabric paintings, ikebana and mixed media sculptures
(including a motorcycle, a mobile, and a fountain), functional chairs and stools, and her
first ever video work entitled Frooty Looping Serial Death. United by the principle of
cycles, this new body of work offers a meditation on the ephemeral and the eternal. 


Yamagata’s choice of materials offers visitors sensory pleasures and bracing
confrontations. Poly-fil-stuffed Lycra creates the undulating surfaces of her fabric
paintings; organics and synthetics intermix forming objects that evoke atavistic
memories. Her mixed media sculptures express various ways in which the body
consumes and interacts with everyday objects. Simulated corn, pizza, and spaghetti
represent nourishment; telephones, keyboards, and acupressure boards remind us of
tactile feedback. The body - both animal and human - is referenced in her use of sun-
bleached bones, seashells and pods, cast limbs, and shiny pools of resin resembling
bodily fluids. 


Through hyperbolic use of food and body parts in her sculptures, these amalgamated
forms become sympathetic characters, their positioning and colors evoking anxiety,
anger, excitement and loneliness. Her visual language embraces decay, balances
horror with humor, and animates inanimate objects. Mixing references and philosophies
from Western and Eastern cultures; from SpongeBob SquarePants, a 15th century
fresco, and H.R. Giger, to Manga, Kishontenketsu and Butoh, the results reflect a
thoroughly contemporary hybridity. 


The centerpiece of the exhibition is her seven-minute video Frooty Looping Serial
Death, a spiraling story within a story, which alternates between the waking and dream
states of a snail. Yamagata’s storytelling combines handmade puppets and props with
human actors, her own pets, and stop animation to create a maelstrom of Freudian
imagery. The artist has conceived of the story to be circular, with no clear beginning and
end, therefore, each visitor’s experience will differ, depending on at which point they
enter the installation.


Yamagata’s works steer our focus away from the realm of human drama and towards
the natural world, embracing processes that are inevitable. Self-Digestion Fountain, a
fiberglass and polyester resin fountain positioned at the entrance to the gallery, is a
foundational piece for the exhibition. It is metaphoric ouroboros, a cascade of
mysterious white fluid pours out into its basin and back up the intake tube, in a
continuous self-replenishing cycle.

List of Works
Installation Views
  • 241030 Akg Yam 01 Scale 3000
  • 241030 Akg Yam 02 3000
  • 241030 Akg Yam 01
  • 241030 Akg Yam 03 3000
  • 241030 Akg Yam 06 Scale
  • 241030 Akg Yam 08
  • 241030 Akg Yam 09
  • 241030 Akg Yam 019
  • 241030 Akg Yam 04 Scale 3000
  • 241030 Akg Yam 010
  • 241030 Akg Yam 015
  • 241030 Akg Yam 016
  • 241030 Akg Yam 014
  • 241030 Akg Yam 011
  • 241030 Akg Yam 018
  • 241030 Akg Yam 017
  • 241030 Akg Yam 020
  • 241030 Akg Yam 05 Scale 3000
  • 241030 Akg Yam 021 V12
Works
  • Yuli Yamagata Crazy Tomato, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Crazy Tomato, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Silent Soup, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Silent Soup, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Reflexology Ikebana, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Reflexology Ikebana, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Space Telephone Ikebana, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Space Telephone Ikebana, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Three Flags Ikebana, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Three Flags Ikebana, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Ikebana in the rain, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Ikebana in the rain, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Ikebana Snail, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Ikebana Snail, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Estrada, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Estrada, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Pizza Fisherman, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Pizza Fisherman, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Tomato Spaghetti Puddle, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Tomato Spaghetti Puddle, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Many Moods Gift, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Many Moods Gift, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Day Night, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Day Night, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Ribs, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Ribs, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Yellow Mouth, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Yellow Mouth, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Shadow Ikebana, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Shadow Ikebana, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Sunflower and a Surprise, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Sunflower and a Surprise, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Butoh Chair, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Butoh Chair, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Rock (to Vivienne W), 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Rock (to Vivienne W), 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Microwave Motocross Horror Show, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Microwave Motocross Horror Show, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Mobile, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Mobile, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Mother Nature Fingers, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Mother Nature Fingers, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Snooker at Night, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Snooker at Night, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Bullet in the Forehead, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Bullet in the Forehead, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Ghosts Don't Wear Watches, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Ghosts Don't Wear Watches, 2024
  • Yuli Yamagata Self-Digestion Fountain, 2024
    Yuli Yamagata
    Self-Digestion Fountain, 2024
Press
  • Yuli Yamagata: Ghosts Don’t Wear Watches

    Alfred Mac Adam, The Brooklyn Rail, December 11, 2024
Video

Related artist

  • Yuli Yamagata

    Yuli Yamagata

Back to exhibitions

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