Kingdom of Cats at Gagosian’s small uptown outpost on Park Avenue transports guests right into a serene, timeless realm the place nature, craft, and tradition merge. Gnarled, winding timber teem with surprises: snakes slither round their trunks, fruits dangle, and cats seem as playful presences. These felines — perched amongst timber, standing tall as unbiased ceramic figures, or depicted within the work on the partitions — infuse the house with a quiet vitality, bridging the magical and the on a regular basis.
These beguiling works are by Setsuko Klossowska de Rola, identified professionally as Setsuko. Born in 1942, the artist hails from a distinguished Samurai household with roots in Kyushu and Kyoto, Japan. On the age of 20, she met the painter Balthus, whom she married 5 years later; with him, she moved to Rome after which Switzerland. Her work seamlessly traverses Japanese and European cultural and inventive traditions. Her ceramic sculptures of timber, foliage, and animals, resembling “Le serpent et la vigne” (2024), mix the intricate textures and natural types of Edo-period Japanese artwork with a European method to illustration that prioritizes permanence and solidity. Tree-like sculptures, chandeliers, and candelabra harken again to the Japanese Shinto faith, wherein timber are sacred objects of worship, whereas her sensitivity to the subject material imbues her work with pathos.
Set up view of Setsuko: Kingdom of Cats at Gagosian, New York. Foreground: “Le chaton et sa mère” (2024), enameled ceramic; background: “Le serpent et la vigne” (2024), enameled ceramic (photograph Natalie Haddad/Hyperallergic)
Cats lurk and lounge in each nook of the exhibition, Setsuko’s tackle the supernatural felines in Japanese mythology. A ceramic one coated in a white enamel glaze and adorned with a double gold chain and a big coronary heart medallion sits elegantly on the gallery’s entrance desk (“Le grand chat au médaillon,” 2024), evoking the maneki-neko, a cat that greets guests with a raised paw. “Le chat et la vie” (2024), a big, spectacular bronze sculpture of a round fig tree, symbolizes the circle of life; a cat resting serenely atop a department brings collectively the ephemeral and everlasting. In Japanese mythology, cats tackle many roles. From the shape-shifting bakeneko to the corpse-stealing kasha, they’re usually portrayed in a nefarious gentle. Whereas Setsuko’s cats pay homage to this deep cultural historical past, they lounge peacefully or gaze outward as understated protectors, exuding a way of calm and untroubled ease.
Setsuko’s method to sculpture is deeply tied to materiality, balancing fragility and endurance by her distinctive strategies. She usually works with darkish terracotta, layering it with white enamel glazes to create a luminous, virtually ethereal floor — heightening the interaction between floor and depth, rawness and refinement, and the distinction between permanence and transience, which extends to her bronze works incorporating imagery from nature. Her work of nonetheless lifes and fantasy scenes, which maintain equal weight within the exhibition, replicate the hushed tonalities of Morandi, the daring readability of Matisse, and the distilled magnificence of Japanese woodblock prints, and echo the quiet resonance of her sculptures. Some are performed immediately onto paint palettes, together with an imaginative portrait of a lady composed of flowers and butterflies.
Throughout these media, Setusko embraces the tensions that construction our lives, shaping kinds that, very similar to nature itself, are in fixed dialogue with time.
Setsuko, three work on terracotta (photograph Rebecca Schiffman/Hyperallergic)
Set up view of Setsuko, “Le grand chat au médaillon” (2024), enameled ceramic (photograph Rebecca Schiffman/Hyperallergic)
Setsuko, “Nature morte avec branches de kumquat” (c. 1960), watercolor and gouache on paper (photograph Natalie Haddad/Hyperallergic)
Setsuko, “Le chaton et sa mère,” element (photograph Natalie Haddad/Hyperallergic)
Setsuko: Kingdom of Cats continues at Gagosian (821 Park Avenue, Higher East Aspect, Manhattan) by March 1. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.