Photography by WAKABAYASHI Michiko
NODA Sachie “A Pure Place” (TOKYO)
20 November - 21 December 2024
“A Pure Place” NODA Sachie
“Not cooling down at all, huh?” is how conversations have started in recent years.
Under the blazing sun, liatris flowers were blooming in a planter among the weeds on an empty lot. An elderly man from the neighbourhood passes away and is sent off customarily. Walking the dog. Foreign workers cooling off in the evening.
An autumn breeze. The neon orange of a jogger’s polo shirt and the tall goldenrod.
Whilst microscopic life is unknowingly being taken underfoot, somewhere else new life is born.
This place is part of something, where great and small things happen simultaneously within the passage of time.
Things we cannot part from, and those we cannot reach. Amidst a landscape of repetition, I imagine a place where all kinds of events occur uneventfully.
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Mizuma Art Gallery is pleased to present “A Pure Place,” a solo exhibition by NODA Sachie, commencing on Wednesday the 20th of November 2024. Noda Sachie (b. 1978, Shiga) began working with plants in her family flower shop, “Hana no En,” whilst also pursuing a career as a painter. Through her daily interactions with plants, she creates landscapes and explores spatial expressions that incorporate natural elements, resonating with things which feel cyclical such as plant-based artworks and gardening. She received the Grand Prize at the Artists’ Fair Kyoto 2021 Akatsuki Art Award and is participating in the public art program at the soon-to-be-completed TODA BUILDING in Kyobashi this autumn, drawing a great deal of attention.
Nineteen years ago, in 2005, Noda held her solo exhibition “Another World – Reproduction of Kitari Residence” at Mizuma Action in Nakameguro. The show left a strong lasting impression, featuring paintings and installations reminiscent of myths and fables that express the fatuity and pain of human existence and society—stripped of superficiality—whilst also capturing the beauty of this world and life within it.
Several years later, after taking a break from creating art, Noda began to paint anew, shifting away from the allegorical anonymity and symbolism of her earlier work to focus on the landscapes that were clearly before her. She distanced herself from pictorial cut-outs, compositions, and stimulating effects, capturing the dull light in an understated way. These scenes evoke a memory of light which feels familiar, as if seen somewhere before. The bitterness of ephemeral life and affection for existence perceived in her works are also embodied in a soft visage of flowers, Noda’s most familiar and continually observed landscape.
Arranged on the floor of the gallery will be stone-like objects that Noda has been making for years, created by compressing plant seeds and fluffy plant material gathered from fields and roadsides, solidified with soil and thread, etc. Like little lives encased in amber, these crystallised pieces of earth hold both a sense of weight and a faint potential for the future, lying dormant. Throughout the exhibition, the water, pellets of soil, and even the movements of those who step into the space will intertwine, creating a setting where each phenomenon flows in relation to the other.
