NIKI & YUSUKE TSUKAMOTO | surely, slumber is more sweet than toil
NIKI & YUSUKE TSUKAMOTO | surely, slumber is more sweet than toil
ARTISTS RECEPTION: February 15, 7–9 PM
EXHIBITION: February 15–March 15, 2025
Dreaming a new reality of care and compassion.
Why this version of reality?
Of all the versions of reality we could choose for our existence, why do humans continually choose toil, strife, oppression, and the pursuit of power?
Let us alone; what pleasure can we have to war with evil? Is there any peace?
What if we choose the work of true care and compassion? What would it look like to love and live in reciprocity with each other and our natural world? So we close our eyes and let us dream something new. -Niki & Yusuke Tsukamoto
Niki and Yusuke Tsukamoto are artists living in the forest above Los Angeles. Their combined art practice focuses on channeling collective consciousness and creating visual language through fiber. Their work is deeply informed by the Wiener Werkstätte approach of coupling avant-garde aesthetics with traditional craft methods and the Bauhaus belief in the oneness of the artist and the craftsman.
As with both preceding movements, the underlying principle of their practice is the creation of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total work of art”. They approach this philosophy by purposefully creating a life that is to be the ultimate artwork.
Niki Tsukamoto’s daily practice is based on making medicinally dyed cloth created from plant sources and using stitch work as a meditation on our collective consciousness through ritual and devotion. Expanding on earlier work exploring myth-making,
Yusuke Tsukamoto creates visual language through universal forms of symbolism in an exploration of nonverbal language as a basis for narrative building and social connection.