Untitled 2014

Editor: We're looking at Yui Yaegashi's "Untitled" from 2014, created with acrylic on paper. I’m struck by the simplicity and almost meditative quality of the lines. What do you make of this work? Curator: Considering the labor and the materials, what exactly are we looking at? Acrylic and paper are easily accessible. And what kind of labor? It is obviously repetitive, nearly automated. In what tradition of production does this painting fit, do you think? Editor: I hadn't considered the repetitive labor. The simple lines made me think more of minimalism, but focusing on the *making* makes it so different. Is there a connection to industrial processes? Curator: Absolutely. Consider the mass production implied. We are used to that process being one of high throughput, and not particularly personal. What if this painting represents an ideal of making that we’ve lost touch with, something at human-scale, while simultaneously channeling the factory line? It looks a bit like a schematic, no? A prototype? Editor: That’s a great point about the factory line, considering it's hand-made but visually reminiscent of mass production. Do you think the ‘Untitled’ aspect is significant, almost as a suggestion to give the work your own industrial 'title'? Curator: Exactly! The "Untitled" element pushes the viewer to consider that these arrangements, and the actions to make them, are the product of labor, like widgets from a production line. They’re deliberately indistinct. What’s important is their making, and our consuming, that labor. How do you think this connects to a Modernist tradition? Editor: I see that now – taking a minimalist or even abstract concept but re-framing it in the context of creation and labor, and also consumption by the viewer. I appreciate your highlighting the process. It definitely shifted my perception of the piece. Curator: And I was reminded of the importance of stripping away the pretension surrounding much art to truly appreciate its construction!