In her third exhibition at the gallery, Akemi Fujita continues her exploration of her medium: driftwood. She sees within the contortions of driftwood the potential to create her own imaginative menagerie: a pig, a pelican, a lizard, a frog, a dinosaur’s head and a dog. She also includes a woman’s head and a gesturing, emaciated hand.

‍

But the exhibition is principally about animals and her approach to them is both sympathetic and somewhat macabre. Her animals are not cuddly, but nor are they aggressive. They are not caricatures so much as they are playful depictions. The artist has a knack for distilling those characteristics that make an animal unique, not only through resemblance. She pinpoints the exact way they stand, sit and move, which defines them (yes, the sculptures do seem to move across the floor or sit and breathe.)

‍

Although her ability to depict animals is uncannily convincing, she never loses sight of the medium, the wood, its marvelous surfaces and forms. The work is, in a sense, highly expressionistic, as well as tactile, vigorous and rich in the thing that so much of contemporary sculpture lacks: humor.