Atsushi Saga b. 1970
Saga graduated from the Department of Painting, Tama Art University in 1996. For the past twenty years, he has been pushing the boundary between painting and sculpture through a labor-intensive process of repeatedly polishing painted surfaces by hand to create a mirror-like texture. His profound exploration of materiality and the limits of human perception has culminated in such series as MUMI, in which subtle images of furniture emerge from reflective white surfaces upon close examination; repose, in which the slightly varied inclination of seemingly uniform panels results in minute differences in reflections on the polished surfaces; inside and Sync, each of which challenges the viewer to identify sensorially-informed geometric patterns hidden beneath the mirroring surfaces.
His notable exhibitions include “MUMI + cube on white (Criterium 61),” Contemporary Art Center Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki (2004); “Another paradise,” 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa (2005); and “Yokohama Triennale 2011,” Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama (2011). His work is held in major private and public collections, such as 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa; Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka; Benesse Holdings, Inc., Okayama; and The Pigozzi Collection, New York.