SASAKI Ai

Born 1976 in Osaka
Based in Osaka

Sasaki is known for drawings and paintings of mountain ridges, forests, and birds featuring simplified forms and vivid colors, and inspired by myths, stories, or poems about specific places. She is also a highly respected book illustrator. At the same time, Sasaki also creates wall drawings at various sites using royal icing, an icing used for confectionery decoration. These murals, while further simplified by restricting the palette to pure white, knit together elaborate, reiterated forms that engulf the viewer. The food-based material is simultaneously familiar, decorative, and symbolic, and the works in the series have a quality of mystical serenity. While the artist often exhibits in verdant natural locations such as Moerenuma (Sapporo), Mount Rokko (Hyogo) and Clematis no Oka (Shizuoka), when her pure white murals and lightly executed drawings are displayed in urban spaces they still have the power to transform the everyday and call forth buried landscapes from memory, casting a unique spell on the viewer.