Maya Frodeman Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Rakuko Naito, whose practice transforms handmade paper into sculptural assemblages that exist somewhere between drawing, relief, and object. For nearly seven decades, New York City has been home to Naito, though the sensibilities that shape her work remain deeply rooted in the material traditions of her native Japan.
Born in Tokyo in 1935, Naito arrived in New York in 1958 after graduating from the Tokyo National University of Art, leaving behind the conventions of postwar Japan in pursuit of artistic freedom and experimentation. Though she resists defining her work through national identity, Japanese materials and methods remain foundational to her practice. Her long engagement with kozo washi paper and traditional Japanese techniques has resulted in a body of work that feels both deeply tactile and resolutely contemporary.
For more than three decades, Naito has explored the possibilities of repetition, texture, and form through constructed paper assemblages. Nature serves less as subject matter than as a structural and philosophical guide. Earlier experiments with close-up photography of organic forms sharpened Naito’s sensitivity to texture, arrangement, and pattern, elements that continue to inform her sculptural compositions today. Rather than drawing lines by hand, she often allows materials themselves to generate form. “A line formed naturally is not the same line drawn by hand,” Naito notes. “I try to experiment and manipulate materials to create my own world.” Across the works in this exhibition, light and shadow replace conventional drawing, while repetition becomes an act of both discipline and discovery.
Working intuitively and without preliminary sketches, Naito allows each composition to emerge through direct engagement with her materials. Untitled and identified only through coded numbers, her works resist fixed interpretation, encouraging viewers to form their own responses through sustained looking. Balancing rigorous structure with organic irregularity, Naito’s work reflects a decades-long commitment to experimentation, material sensitivity, and the transformative possibilities of paper.
Born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1935, Naito studied at the Tokyo National University of Art. After her graduation in 1958, she moved to New York City, where she has lived and worked ever since. Naito’s first solo exhibition was at the World House Gallery in New York in 1965. Featured throughout the United States, Europe and Japan, Naito’s work is represented in numerous galleries and public collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), the Voorlinden Museum (Wassenaar, the Netherlands), the Kemper Art Collection (Chicago), Miami-Dade Community College (Miami), The Larry Aldrich Museum (Ridge eld, CT), the Roland Gibson Art Foundation (SUNY Potsdam) and the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. She was an artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in 2003.
