Mariko Susu: Certain Places

Mariko Susu was born in Hanamaki, Japan in 1949, and studied sculpture and design at Musashino Art University, Tokyo, 1968-70. In 1989, Susu’s creative focus shifted to painterly abstraction – attracting nominations for the Tokyo-based, Ueno Royal Museum Grand Prize in 1998 and 1999. Whilst nominally resident in Hanamaki, Susu has lived in New Zealand for extended periods. Her development as a painter is something she attributes to New Zealand’s relatively slow and gentle pace of life. Having first exhibited in New Zealand in 2001, Susu held solo exhibitions at COCA in 2008 and 2009, and was included in COCA’s recent Visions of Utopia group show.

To fully appreciate Susu’s paintings, one ought to look beyond superficial references to Abstract Expressionism or Minimalism, as well as those stereotypes popularly associated with ‘Japanese-ness.’ Thus, whilst one might associate the vertical band slicing through Integration (2010) with Newman’s ‘zips,’ and the atmospheric, blue rectangle suspended over a pale ground in #137 (2009) with Rothko, the quietude of Susu’s work seems at odds with the existential angst of America’s postwar art heroes. One gets the impression that Susu is less concerned with fathoming an ‘ultimate reality’ than in expressing a ‘great sense of inner calmness’[1] inspired by her experience of the serene and unspoiled New Zealand environment. Indeed, some of her paintings are almost landscapes. Consider A Certain Place (2008), where Susu rotates the vertical strip motif through ninety degrees, transforming it into a horizon line.

Similarly, whilst the blank-faced minimalism and ‘weathered’ surface texture of Susu’s paintings seems quintessentially Japanese (in Japan, the term shibui signifies an aesthetic of reticence, whilst a rustic, weathered appearance is favoured for Shinto and Buddhist shrines, tea houses, etc.), these features also need to be understood in terms of her background in design. One might argue that the opalescent, blue array in a grid-based work like #151 (2010) evokes not only traditional Japanese ink painting and porcelain, but also the aesthetic of the Bauhaus – warped through a temporal lens of eighty years, and recast in the cross-cultural melting pot of the early 21st century.

In this regard, there exists an intriguing consonance between Susu’s paintings and works by Japanese expatriate Kazu Nakagawa (resident on Waiheke Island since 1988).[2] Like Susu, Nakagawa’s background is design (his paintings and installations evolved from first careers in windsurfer design and furniture-making), and like Susu, Nakagawa’s creations favour formal minimalism and exude meditative potentials. The question arises: is this quality ‘Japanese’ – or does it, perhaps, reflect a desire to define a breathing space in a fast-paced, contemporary world rocked by the turbulent currents of commerce, technology and cross-cultural exchange? If the latter is the case, Susu’s work provokes a further question: what does it say about New Zealand that it might afford a place where an artist might fashion culture in the cradle of nature?

-David Khan

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[1]Mariko Susu, ‘My life as a painter,’ unpublished artist statement, (2010).
[2]Kazu Nakagawa, online biography, http://www.kazunakagawa.com/biography.html, <18.12.10>.

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