First take: these pieces are very easy to like and for a number of reasons.  The focus is on their pleasant luminous qualities and soft color tones. The canvases offer slight shaped variations in the edges or in the perimeters of the forms. This subtly imbues the vertical rectangular format with an organic undertone. The surface handling is equally sublime and often as delicate as a faux finish.  They take on the dual roles of paintings and as objects that push the 3 dimensional relationship with the wall.  Two long and thin vertical pieces occupy corner spaces and so remove themselves from the dimensional dialog

Robert Yasuda at Elizabeth Harris

Robert Yasuda at Elizabeth Harris

somewhat. Yasuda is originally from Hawaii and spends time in the Florida Keys.  These pieces, with their quiet shimmering pastel tones offer a sensibility that evokes those warmer climates.

Second take: the problem with this work is that it is very easy to like; there is plenty of sweet but no sour, no engaging tension or contrasts.  The sensibility is more weighted toward pure sensation and the conventions of design. Unlike minimalist art where sensibility is nearly stripped away these pieces are reductive but elegantly beautiful. They do not give themselves over to this completely but the imbalance creates a greater dependency on the gallery context to define them as works of art.  Of course context is important to any work of art and will have an immense effect on the power of its expression.  But place these works in say, a corporate context, and chances are that they will quickly disappear into the walls as ornamentation.  In the same context more provocative art would be subject to the same pressures but would be expected to hold up better.