Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, TX

Opening Thursday, September 10th, 2026 6:00 – 8:30 pm

Whisper #2, 2024
Hand cast resin, stainless steel, kozo paper pulp, cheesecloth
60 x 96 x 32 inches

Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to present The Shape of Breathing, a solo exhibition by Yuriko Yamaguchi, on view from September 10th through October 17th, 2026.

Yuriko Yamaguchi’s sculptures emerge from the meeting point of intuition, ecology, and lived experience. Rooted in an instinctive creative process rather than predetermined outcomes, her works unfold as evolving organisms. Forms seem to grow rather than be constructed. They reveal unseen relationships that connect the body, the landscape, and memory. Rather than representing nature, Yamaguchi creates spaces that remind us we are nature, inseparable from the systems that sustain us.

Working with hand-cast resin, paper pulp, steel wire, silk thread, and found materials, she builds intricate forms that feel both primordial and unfamiliar. Their branching structures recall root systems, river networks, cellular growth, weather currents, and constellations, blurring distinctions between the microscopic and the infinite. Each work develops through accumulation where the act of making becomes an unfolding conversation with the material itself. 

Infinitive Growth, 2026
Hand cast resin and stainless steel wire 48 x 48 x
16 in diameter

Yamaguchi approaches each work with curiosity and instinct guiding every decision. Materials respond to one another as much as to the artist’s hand: wire finds its own direction, fibers gather into delicate membranes, resin captures light in unexpected ways. As organic beings ourselves, we recognize these rhythms intuitively. Her work becomes a quiet affirmation of our kinship with the living world and of the invisible forces that connect all forms of life.

Throughout The Shape of Breathing, Yamaguchi invites us to consider how presence can be felt through absence, how fragility can hold extraordinary strength, and how stillness often contains constant movement. Her sculptures shift with light, shadow, and the movement of the viewer, transforming the surrounding space into an active participant. Nothing is static. Perception changes with every step, encouraging attentiveness instead of certainty. 

The title The Shape of Breathing evokes something both universal and intangible. Breath, though it cannot be seen directly, shapes our movements, our awareness, and our relationship to the spaces we inhabit. Like breath, Yamaguchi’s sculptures trace the unseen patterns that sustain living systems currents of growth, exchange, and transformation that extend through forests, waterways, root networks, and the human body alike. Her work reveals that life is defined not by isolated forms, but by the continuous flow of relationships that connect us to one another and to the natural world. 

The questions that have guided Yamaguchi’s practice for decades, “Who am I? Where am I going?” remain open, not as problems to solve but as invitations to keep evolving. Her sculptures embrace impermanence. Growth, transformation, and dissolution are inseparable aspects of the same living process. 

At a time when technology increasingly mediates our relationship with the world, The Shape of Breathing offers a return to intuition. It reminds us that beneath complexity lies a profound simplicity: we are living beings shaped by the same forces that shape forests, rivers, fungi, and stars. 

Yamaguchi’s work asks us to recognize that connection not as an idea, but as something we already know instinctively.

About Barbara Davis Gallery 

For 43 years, Barbara Davis Gallery has brought groundbreaking contemporary art to Houston. Driven by her intuitive sensibilities and perennially fresh vision, Barbara Davis has championed a generation of significant contemporary artists. In the process she has challenged a generation of art collectors, both seasoned and aspiring, to see the beauty and value in their work through dialogs and panel discussions with prominent museum curators and artists from across genres. She has launched the careers of international artists such as Julie Mehretu, one of the most important contemporary artists of our time, and Andrea Bianconi, who has become an international figure in the contemporary art scene, having given Mehretu her first gallery exhibition and Bianconi his first U.S. exhibition. She was also one of the first to bring to Houston the influential names of Joseph Beuys, Kiki Smith, Louis Bourgeois, Jonathan Borofsky, Günther Förg, Allan McCollum, Gilbert & George, Chuck Close, Robert Longo, Sally Mann, Jenny Holzer, Sam Gilliam, Jessica Stockholder, John Baldessari and Elizabeth Peyton among many others. She brought progressive international exhibitions such as Leipzig Select, artists from the New Leipzig School, and exhibitions for Beijing East Village artists Zhang Huan and Li Wei. Barbara Davis Gallery was one of the first Texas galleries to be included in the influential and prestigious Art Basel Miami Beach art fair. The gallery’s exhibitions have been reviewed in international publications such as ArtForum, Art in America, Art News, Flash Art International, The Art Economist, and The New York Times among many others. Her passion for exhibiting innovative contemporary art and her commitment to educating her collectors and the community has driven the focus of the gallery for 43 years.