Petrine | Memorandum

A constant and slight shift, almost undetectable at first glance. Like a story exchanging hands, its narrative nudged by each person with their own influences. Sena Sasaki contemplates these ordeals in his practice, integrating them into his processes while navigating his own personal history. In Memorandum Sasaki confronts the content of a document sent from the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces to the Imperial Japanese Government in 1947 concerning the “Marking of Export Articles”, stipulating goods intended for foreign use to be marked “Made in Occupied Japan”.

Through his quest for truth through transitional phases Sasaki is developing a practice of repetition: in Occupied a simple change in colour of the canvases can read as a violent orange afterglow, a remnant of a blast. Or a defiant peer at the sun, slowly settling into a warm embrace of the eyelids. However these perceptions vary, they always constitute truth in a collective chromatic spectrum of experiences. They can always be significant parts of our shared fabric of reality.

Sasaki’s work is a time decelerating apparatus to ease restless habits, recognising the quiet shifts within monotonous, self-imposed and predetermined routines. Continuously remoulding the stamp used to imprint his paintings, the word starts to deteriorate in a tireless pursuit of self-examination.

– Duy Hoàng

Sena Sasaki (b. 1990, Tokyo) is based in Hokkaido. His most recent exhibition was held at Commercial Street at 5152 La Vista Court & 709 N Hill St (2021).