Suto is known for making finely-detailed black-and-white drawings on paper and canvas that depict scenes from residential neighborhoods in Tokyo. Suto walks around different neighborhoods and photographs images that catch her eye. She then uses the photographs as a guideline for recreating the image “as she saw it.” Concentrating on the outlines of objects, Suto creates an uncanny realism that exists somewhere between photographic veracity and individual perception. Her latest series of works concentrates on potted plants. A two-meter long drawing on canvas, Potted Plants and House – Fukazawa (2008), depicts with almost obsessive precision the rows of potted plants obscuring a home in the Tokyo district of Fukazawa. Plants and trees of all varieties, placed on the ground and on shelving units or hanging from a wooden pole, spill out from the home’s entrance of sliding glass doors and into the narrow backstreet. Suto draws each leaf and branch of these plants, but this contrasts with the sparse detailing of the one-story home, which is crowned by a small satellite dish that enigmatically resembles a full moon or the mirror in a Shinto shrine. Another large-scale work, Landscape of 100 Bonsai (2008), depicts a backlot filled with rows of bonsai trees on benches that recede into the background, while the surrounding buildings and sky, just visible over the backlot’s far wall, appear oddly two-dimensional. The effect shifts the realism of the drawing—the sense of immediacy it inspires in viewers—from three-dimensional space into what might be called “an atmosphere with depth.” Although she says it is not a conscious element of her work, Suto acknowledges the influence of manga drawing and ukiyo-e wood block prints in her art. She says that she responds to scenes that are funny, or out of place: “Anybody can have potted plants but there are people who go beyond normal. To me the potted plants upend the pragmatism dictating urban environments and the idea that everybody and everything should have a purpose.” Other works in exhibition include a framed diptych on paper mounted on panel and small studies of individual or small groups of potted plants on canvas that, through their unpredictable forms, evoke a visual sense of humor. Yukiko Suto graduated with a BA in graphic design from Tama Art University in 2001. She had a solo exhibition at Tokyo Opera City as part of its Project N series of emerging artists in 2007 and was included in “VOCA: The Vision of Contemporary Art” at Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, in 2008, and “Tokyo Painting: My Little Everyday Sceneries” at Tokyo Wondersite in 2007. Suto was a recipient of the Yasushi Fujimoto Prize at GEISAI #8 in 2005. * The text provided by Take Ninagawa.