Galleries Fortes Vilaça and Leme are pleased to present Japanese artist Yoshihiro Suda’s first solo show in Brazil. The set of artworks featured is characterized by realism, technical expertise and delicateness.

Since the start of his career, in the 1990s, Suda has created his sculptures from wood, hand carving the raw material into the shapes of plants. His repertoire involves myriad species of flowers (such as camellias, tulips, lilies and roses) and leaves, mimetically sculpted and painted. The artist’s devotion to realism is striking – the plants look like they are alive and able to photosynthesize. Appropriating forms from nature, Suda creates artworks that deal with the fragile borders between reality and fiction, life and death.

His small sculptures are never displayed atop pedestals or inside glass display cases. The artist explores the relation with the architecture: the flowers are attached directly to the walls or ceiling, and the leaves are arranged on the floor. Since the pieces are always laid out at a considerable distance from one to the next, the sculptures punctuate the exhibition space. The empty setting alludes to a characteristic of Japanese popular culture: the use of few objects in daily life.

Three flowers opened at the peak of their beauty are seen at Fortes Vilaça Gallery, while at Leme Gallery leaves and stems sprout from the corners and from cracks in the cement, suggesting the passage of time from one place to the next, or the presence of two seasons at once in the same city.

The partnership between the two galleries arose due to their common desire to hold an exhibition of Yoshihiro Suda in Brazil. When the gallerists discovered that they shared the same aim they decided to hold this show concurrently, in order to provide the Brazilian public a more thoroughgoing introduction to the artist’s oeuvre.

Yoshihiro Suda was born in Yamanashi, Japan, in 1969. He lives and works in Tokyo. In 2004, he had an important solo show at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; in 1999, his work was shown at Hara Museum, Tokyo, Japan, and at the Art Institute of Chicago, USA. His work is featured in important collections such as that of Centre George Pompidou, Paris, and the National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan.