Text by Sabino Maria Frassà
Autumn is the season of leaves, when nature sheds its skin but does not fall silent — echoing Ungaretti’s verses, speaking of something that fades yet still has much to say.
There comes a moment when the leaf ceases to be mere vegetal matter and becomes a language: a fragment of the world reflecting our own fragility.
Throughout art history, the leaf has been a recurring subject — from the impressionist reflections of Monet to the symbolic transparencies of Magritte, to the sculptural force of Penone and the ephemeral architectures of Andy Goldsworthy, whose land art is woven from wind, decay, and rebirth.
If the 19th and 20th centuries celebrated the leaf as a poetic sign, today it is fascinating to discover how new generations of artists reinterpret it, moving between technology, spirituality, and material experimentation.
This reflection took shape on social media through Cramum’s new “Leaf Gallery”, a digital curatorial project featuring four contemporary artists — Yusuke Asai, Lito, Miya Ando, and Gaetano Frigo — each transforming the leaf into a living body of light, memory, and energy.
See the IG gallery -> https://www.instagram.com/cramum/
A Green Thread in Common
Different in language and culture, Asai, Lito, Ando, and Frigo share the same intuition: the leaf is no longer a mere natural symbol but an interface between humanity and the world, a tool for knowledge and healing.
In their hands, it becomes painting, sculpture, light, and frequency — a universal code that bridges East and West, tradition and contemporaneity.
The Leaf Gallery is therefore more than a curatorial series: it is an invitation to slow down the gaze, to listen to the breathing matter that surrounds us, and to rediscover — like the falling leaf that never truly dies — the regenerative power of art and nature.
Yusuke Asai – Nature Drawing Itself
Japanese artist Yusuke Asai ideally opens this expanded gallery with works created using leaves, earth, branches, and straw collected on-site.
In his murals, humans, animals, and plants emerge directly from matter, as if nature itself were self-portraying.
His research, close to artistic biotechnology, observes organic transformations — humidity, light, and decay — as integral parts of the creative process.
In Asai’s vision, autumn is no longer a season but a living organism that breathes art.
Lito – The Patience of Breath
Known as Lito Leafart, the Japanese artist born in 1986 in Kanagawa Prefecture turns real leaves into delicate sculptures of light and silence.
Self-taught, he began in 2020 as a meditative exercise, channeling his experience with ADHD into a practice of patience and focus.
Each leaf becomes a suspended microcosm, an intricate balance of breath and emptiness: not a representation of nature, but nature telling its own story through human calm and precision.
Miya Ando – The Breath of Light
American artist Miya Ando, born in 1973 to Japanese and American parents and holding a degree in East Asian Studies from UC Berkeley, lives between New York and Los Angeles.
In her installations, real Bodhi leaves (Ficus religiosa) are stripped of their cellulose, dyed, and suspended on monofilament threads, floating like particles of time and prayer.
For Ando, the leaf is the visible body of impermanence — a symbol of awakening and contemplation, a prayer transformed into light.
Her poetic vision unites East and West, matter and meditation, spirituality and the science of light.
Gaetano Frigo – The Leaf as Natural Technology
The fourth artist of the Leaf Gallery and a finalist of the Cramum Prize, Gaetano Frigo explores the biophilic powerof nature through visual perception.
His works, created by removing pigment with bleach on canvas, seem to lighten both the surface and the viewer, radiating a restorative and balancing light.
Golden ratios and natural geometries turn his paintings into a true “natural technology”, capable of generating harmony and wellbeing.
“The sight of a leaf — like that of an animal or a mountain — activates a biophilic effect in our brain: it reconnects us to where we come from, relaxes the mind, and restores the spirit.”
— Gaetano Frigo
