Yusuke Asai, the Japanese artist who paints spectacular murals with mud and other natural materials

Yusuke Asai is a Japanese artist who creates murals using a surprising material: mud. It uses it as if it were a natural pigment, without ever planning the result in advance. Asai prefers to let nature, and himself, lead the creative process, allowing the figures to emerge spontaneously while working.

After studying ceramic and graduating from Kamiyabe High School, Asai deepened the study of popular art and tribal traditions of different cultures, and then deciding to use the earth as a material for its works, as an omnipresent element and, at the same time, alive.

Asai said he had a lot of fun in the collection phase since this part of the process makes him feel deeply connected to the places he explores.

His adventure with this innovative technique began in 2008 and has since made murals throughout Japan. However, since it is ephemeral works, many of them have already disappeared, but this aspect does not disturb it at all, because, as he said, in nature everything is destined to be temporary.

Asai also uses ashes, dust, straw, all natural elements that in its art replace colors, giving life to a universe populated by people, animals and plants.

The splendid murals of the Niranjana School, a school of a remote Indian village that Asai has completely renewed, also to attract attention to the lives of children who live in poverty, are also his own murals.

In the work entitled “Yamatane” exhibited at the Houston Rice Gallery, in Texas, Asai used 27 different types of local soil giving life to an intricate organic mural full of real and imaginary creatures.

No less his paintings and sculptures are no clear testimony of a multifaceted talent.

Sources: ASAIYUSUKE/RICE GALLERY