Timeline

Nature is a sublime engineer. She is both mathematician and inventor. So, too, is Rakuko Naito. Her simple yet rarified arrangements of ordinary materials are painstakingly built through procedural tasks that transform her sheets of paper or strips of wood into elegantly formed and seemingly very rational systems. Yet as in nature, it is the nuances of her materials that catch the eye: the ever so slightly burnt edge of paper to suggest color, the subtle twist on the end of a ball of cotton to suggest growth, or the jagged fold of paper that implies movement. For the past decade, Naito has been hard at work on delicate, monochromatic assemblies of materials. Naito’s repetition of actions, decisions, and manipulated forms is the basis for her refined works. Through her intuitive process she creates a harmonious balance and pattern of a chosen material always set within the limits and confines of white painted rectilinear boxes or frames. The frame sets the boundaries in which she can think and work. As a result of her innate methodology, Naito has found a unique class for her ideas somewhere between our notion of “drawing" and “sculpture". Naito’s intimate abstractions place her in the company of an illustrative group of modern and contemporary artists such as Manzoni from Italy, Jan Schoohoven from the Netherlands, and Franz Erhard Walther from Germany who also have experimented with and explored the structure of materials in similar formats and with equal rigor. Born in Tokyo, Japan, Naito studied at the Tokyo National University of Art. After her graduation, in 1958, she moved to New York, where she has lived and worked ever since. Rakuko is represented across the United States in numerous galleries and public collections including the Kemper Art Collection (Chicago), The Larry Aldrich Museum (Ridgefield, CT), and the Ro- land Gibson Art Foundation (SUNY Potsdam).