Spiegelnde Blicke - Maskengeschichten // Yukie Laurentia Beheim

In the organizer's words:

Yukie Laurentia Beheim studied fine art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the classes of Prof. Rita McBride, Analia Saban and Prof. Franka Hörnschemeyer. In 2017-2018 she was a research student at the Kyoto City University of Arts in Japan with a DAAD one-year scholarship. In 2019, she completed her studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with a diploma and as a master student of Prof. Franka Hörnschemeyer. In the same year, she moved to Kyoto to learn how to carve masks of the traditional Japanese Noh theater. Her work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions in Germany and Japan: Among others in Düsseldorf at Museum K21 (2020), Weltkunstzimmer (2021) and Kunst im Tunnel (2022), as well as at Art Live Theater International Kyoto (2021), The Terminal Kyoto (2023, 2024), Kyoto Prefectural Center for Arts and Culture (2023) and The Museum of Kyoto (2024).

Yukie Laurentia Beheim's work focuses on identity, memory and transformation. She explores these themes in a variety of ways in her paintings, sculptural objects, architectural structures, photographs and videos, which are often related to each other in terms of space and time and can also form independent works when intertwined. Since her student days, Beheim has been particularly preoccupied with the motifs of the tree and the mask - especially the nohmask - which for her are both an object of study and a means of expression. Her works usually focus on the inner life of the human being. Questions about their nature and about what is constant in our ever-changing world find expression.

"Spiegelnde Blicke - Maskengeschichten" shows a selection of the works she has recently created while working with noh masks and wood.

In recent years, Beheim has produced both traditional noh masks and free mask forms based on the basic shapes of noh masks. In this exhibition, she shows works in which she examines the self from different perspectives. On the one hand, masks are exhibited as real objects. On the other hand, video works are shown in which the artist herself wears a mask and uses it in a new context far removed from noh theater. In this way, both the mask itself and our culturally conditioned view of it are reflected. References to the history and mythology of the Japanese and Western worlds are interwoven and cultural boundaries are made fluid. As so often in Beheim's works, there are references to elements of nature that play an important role in the pictorial narrative - like the mask - as a mirror of emotional impulses. New works that can expand our understanding of the nature of trees and wood form an atmospheric framework.