HOUSTON, TX.- Rice University Art Gallery has commissioned Japanese artist Yusuke Asai to create a new installation in conjunction with The Menil Collection’s exhibition, Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence. Asai paints with different types of mud, dust, soil, and other natural materials he finds locally. In his immersive murals inspired by Indian folk painting, simple geometric shapes form dense forests full of imaginary animals and people appearing in lush patterns crawling across walls and ceilings. For his first exhibition in the United States, Yusuke Asai will transform Houston’s swampy soil found in its bayous and surrounding areas into a stylized, fantastical landscape. The opening on Thursday, October 2 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm will be the first event to kick off Rice Gallery’s yearlong Twentieth Anniversary celebration. Complimentary snacks and beverages including ale courtesy of Saint Arnold Brewery will be served. The event is free and open to the public. Paid parking (credit card only) is available directly in front of the gallery on the Fondren Visitors’ Lot and near the Rice Stadium.

Yusuke Asai became known internationally when images of his mural in a classroom at the Niranjana Public Welfare School in Bihar, India spread across the Internet. Using seven different types of soil found in Bihar, Asai transformed the classroom’s bare walls into an imaginative and inspiring place for local children and their families. The mural was sponsored by Japan’s non-profit Wall Art Project and co-produced by the Japan Foundation. Asai has had an ongoing role at the annual Wall Art Festival in which Japanese and Indian artists are invited to paint, interact with students, and host workshops at schools in the villages of Sujata in Bodhgaya (Bihar) and Ganjad (Maharashtra), India. The artists’ works make classrooms dynamic and engaging learning environments for students and encourage communities to see value in education. In addition, the program seeks to draw attention from around the world to social inequality and the reality of deprivation in these villages.

Born 1981 in Tokyo, Japan, Yusuke Asai began his artistic career by filling the margins of his textbooks with drawings. Graduating from Kamiyabe High School, Kanagawa in 1999 with a concentration in ceramics, he chose to forego college and instead to continue making art on his own. Having grown up in an urban setting and with little access to nature, Asai began to create his own version of the natural world, using tape to create drawings of plants that he called “masking plants” and experimenting with natural materials. In 2007 he turned to the earth itself – dirt – and since then has painted his “mud murals” throughout Japan. He has had solo exhibitions at the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (2012) and Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo (2011), and his work has been represented at the Setouchie Triennale 2013, Rokko Meets Art 2012, and the Aichi Triennale 2010. Yusuke Asai lives in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture and maintains a studio in Tokyo. He is represented by ARATANIURANO, Tokyo.