YURIKO YAMAGUCHI: THE SHAPE OF BREATHING:

Yuriko Yamaguchi

Whisper #2, 2024,

hand cast resin, stainless steel, kozo paper pulp, cheesecloth

60 x 96 x 32 inches

Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to present The Shape of Breathing, a solo exhibition by Yuriko Yamaguchi, on view from September 10th through October 17th, 2026.

Yuriko Yamaguchi's sculptures emerge from the meeting point of intuition, ecology, and lived experience. Rooted in an instinctive creative process rather than predetermined outcomes, her works unfold as evolving organisms. Forms seem to grow rather than be constructed. They reveal unseen relationships that connect the body, the landscape, and memory. Rather than representing nature, Yamaguchi creates spaces that remind us we are nature, inseparable from the systems that sustain us.

Working with hand-cast resin, paper pulp, steel wire, silk thread, and found materials, she builds intricate forms that feel both primordial and unfamiliar. Their branching structures recall root systems, river networks, cellular growth, weather currents, and constellations, blurring distinctions between the microscopic and the infinite. Each work develops through accumulation where the act of making becomes an unfolding conversation with the material itself.

Yuriko Yamaguchi

Infinity  Growth, 2026

Hand cast resin and stainless steel wire 

48 x 48 x 16 in diameter

Yamaguchi approaches each work with curiosity and instinct guiding every decision. Materials respond to one another as much as to the artist's hand: wire finds its own direction, fibers gather into delicate membranes, resin captures light in unexpected ways. As organic beings ourselves, we recognize these rhythms intuitively. Her work becomes a quiet affirmation of our kinship with the living world and of the invisible forces that connect all forms of life.

Throughout The Shape of Breathing, Yamaguchi invites us to consider how presence can be felt through absence, how fragility can hold extraordinary strength, and how stillness often contains constant movement. Her sculptures shift with light, shadow, and the movement of the viewer, transforming the surrounding space into an active participant. Nothing is static. Perception changes with every step, encouraging attentiveness instead of certainty.

The title The Shape of Breathing evokes something both universal and intangible. Breath, though it cannot be seen directly, shapes our movements, our awareness, and our relationship to the spaces we inhabit.  Like breath, Yamaguchi’s sculptures trace the unseen patterns that sustain living systems currents of growth, exchange, and transformation that extend through forests, waterways, root networks,and the human body alike. Her work reveals that life is defined not by isolated forms, but by the continuous flow of relationships that connect us to one another and to the natural world.

The questions that have guided Yamaguchi's practice for decades, “Who am I? Where am I going?”remain open, not as problems to solve but as invitations to keep evolving. Her sculptures embrace impermanence. Growth, transformation, and dissolution are inseparable aspects of the same living process. At a time when technology increasingly mediates our relationship with the world, The Shape of Breathing offers a return to intuition. It reminds us that beneath complexity lies a profound simplicity: we are living beings shaped by the same forces that shape forests, rivers, fungi, and stars. Yamaguchi's work asks us to recognize that connection not as an idea, but as something we already know instinctively.