Setsuko

Nature doesn’t need us, but we need nature.
—Setsuko

Gagosian is pleased to announce Into Nature, an exhibition of new and recent ceramic and bronze sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by Setsuko at the gallery in Gstaad. Since 1977, Setsuko has resided in the Grand Chalet of Rossinière, close to Gstaad, making this an opportunity for her to exhibit within reach of her Swiss home. Into Nature furthers the bodies of work presented in Into the Trees, Setsuko’s debut exhibition at Gagosian Paris in 2019, and Into the Trees II, a solo presentation at Gagosian Rome in 2022.

On view in Gstaad are new ceramic sculptures, produced at Astier de Villatte’s Paris workshop and made of terra-cotta glazed in white enamel. Setsuko’s renderings of trees, with their delicately modeled representations of acorns, blooms, foliage, and fruit, emphasize the rooted solidity of their trunks to convey lasting strength and emergent growth. Reminiscent of Japanese ceramics dating back to the age of Jōmon earthenware (c. 10,500–300 BCE), these works also refer to the animistic Japanese religion Shintō, to which trees are of central symbolic importance.