Rei Naito @ Peder Lund, Oslo - 'breath' Exhibition

Rei Naito: breath

Peder Lund, Oslo

November 22, 2025 – February 14, 2026

Peder Lund presents an exhibition with the eminent Japanese artist Rei Naito (b. 1961, Hiroshima). Renowned for her delicate installations, sculptures, and works on paper that explore the incomprehensible fact of life itself, Rei Naito invites visitors into an atmosphere of quiet reflection on breath, spirit, and our shared existence. At the heart of her practice lies the enduring question: "Is simply existing on this earth a blessing in itself?" 

To encounter a work by Rei Naito is to enter a space of heightened awareness — of one's own body, one's breath, and of life itself as a fleeting yet shared condition. Over the past forty years, Naito has devoted her practice to what she has described as "the incomprehensible fact that we are alive in this world." Her works do not impose meaning so much as they stage conditions in which meaning arises — ephemeral, delicate, and deeply intimate.

Central to Naito's art is the concept of breath. For Rei Naito, breath is at once invisible and palpable, a paradoxical force that affirms life precisely because it cannot be contained or possessed. In the sculptural installation tama/anima (please breathe life into me) (2025), a narrow gutter of water shimmers with subtle movement. The work unites two linguistic roots: tama, the Japanese word for spirit or soul, and anima, the Latin root for breath. The piece quietly insists that to live is to participate in this exchange of air and water, of spirit and body. It epitomizes her conviction that art, at its most essential, is a vessel for the life force that cannot be owned but only experienced.

Her commitment to this elemental aesthetic was seen in her 2023 exhibition at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, where tama/anima appeared in dialogue with color beginning. The series color beginning originated in 2021 as a pair of paper works exhibited at MtK Contemporary Art in Kyoto. In 2024, at the Tokyo National Museum, Rei Naito introduced the expanded title color beginning/breath with the addition of "breath." These exhibitions deepened a process that now culminates in Oslo, where paintings and sculptural works form a single, sustained inhalation and exhalation across space.

If tama/anima embodies the vital currents of water and spirit, Naito's works on paper register breath in another register. The series developed out of a daily practice of attuning to light and atmosphere. For Naito, each work is not an image but a lived exhalation, a veil of color that makes palpable the moment of its own making. Positioning herself at a point removed from form, Naito explores moments when mind, hands, fingers, paper, paint, water, and brush become one. Her painting media shift and go through cycles; Rei Naito employs brushes, spoons, paper, canvas, flannel, paint tubes, tissue, and even branches, awakening physical and mental instincts that transcend human will. Many of the works exhibited at Peder Lund were painted using branches; the final piece completed with a branch gathered in Oslo. This method liberates her and the countless lives dwelling in the unconscious, guiding her toward the essence of human nature.

During preparations for her recent exhibitions, Rei Naito began to perceive the white surfaces of her paintings as "matrix" spaces — living grounds where color reveals air and light within, generating phenomena akin to her spatial works. The presentation at Peder Lund extends this understanding: paintings and sculptural works intertwine, exploring the indivisibility of life and death. The works reveal a world in which everything — objects, people, animals, plants, air, light, the departed and the unborn — interweaves inseparably with our own breath.

Crucially, Rei Naito refuses to frame these drawings. To do so, she explains, would seal them off from the atmosphere of the world, contradicting their very essence. The works are intended to breathe with the space in which they are shown, their edges unprotected, their surfaces vulnerable. Like breaths, they must remain porous, inseparable from the air around them. Installed unframed, the drawings ask the viewer to approach gently, to encounter them not as objects but as presences — fragile, momentary, and inseparable from the act of perception itself.

The unframed condition also signals Naito's insistence on site specificity. She creates works only after visiting a space, allowing the encounter with its light, scale, and atmosphere to shape the form of what she produces. Her art is never autonomous but always relational, responsive to place. This principle is most famously evident in Matrix (2010) at the Teshima Art Museum, designed with Ryue Nishizawa, where water droplets form and disperse endlessly across a concrete floor, inextricable from the architecture and its natural surroundings. But the same principle governs her paper works: each is conceived as a beginning rather than a closed composition, a color-breath that expands into the environment of its display.

Naito's commitment to fragility and specificity has been affirmed by a series of major institutional exhibitions. At the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, she realised Tout animal est dans le monde comme de l'eau à l'intérieur de l'eau (2009–10), a pivotal, site-specific project that marked a turning point in her practice; the work has since been revisited from the collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Hayama (2022–23). More recently, the Tokyo National Museum presented come and live – go and live (June–September 2024), an exhibition conceived in direct dialogue with the museum's architecture and holdings, extending her site-responsive ethos across multiple galleries. At the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, she created a suite of acrylic works that responded directly to the changing light of the museum's modernist galleries.

Other works in the present exhibition extend these concerns materially. The balloon sculpture Two Lives (2025) contains air as its medium — literal breath held in nylon forms, suspended by thread, subject to the slightest shift in atmosphere. The wool cluster color beginning (2025) suggests both cellular growth and cosmic formation, inviting the viewer to contemplate life at scales both intimate and infinite. Together, these works reinforce Naito's conviction that existence is contingent, provisional, and always shared.

Rei Naito first came to international attention with her participation in the 1997 Venice Biennale, where her installation One Place on Earth permitted a single visitor at a time to enter a fragile, translucent chamber. That radical gesture defined her subsequent practice: art as encounter, both profoundly personal and inseparable from the larger shared condition of being. Later projects have expanded this vocabulary to architectural scale, but always with the same insistence on fragility, intimacy, and breath.

In a contemporary art landscape often dominated by spectacle, Naito's works stand as quiet resistances. They ask us to attend to what is smallest, most fleeting, and most vital. In doing so, she belongs to a lineage of artists — from Eva Hesse and Agnes Martin to James Turrell — who reveal the immaterial through subtle means. Yet Naito's contribution is distinct: her art insists not only on perception but on coexistence. To breathe with her works is to recognize the breath we share with others, with animals, with the environment itself.

Rei Naito's art is neither doctrinal nor programmatic. Though she draws on the resonances of spiritual traditions, she remains outside any one system of belief. What she offers instead is art as lived metaphysics: an opportunity to experience the fact of existence, not through abstraction but through the simplest of means — water, light, color, air, and above all, breath. Her works are not objects to be possessed but conditions to be entered into. They remind us, gently but with insistence, that to be alive is to be fragile, connected, and sustained by breath.

Rei Naito has been honored with solo exhibitions at various esteemed institutions, including The National Museum of Art, Osaka (1995); Karmeliterkloster, Frankfurt am Main (1997); The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, Kanagawa (2009); Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo (2014); The Japan Cultural Institute in Paris (2017); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2017); Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki (2018); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa; and Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Munich (2023).

Permanent installations include Being given (Kinza, Art House Project, Naoshima, Kagawa, 2001) and Matrix (Teshima Art Museum, Teshima, Kagawa, 2010). Awards received include Promising Artists and Scholars of Contemporary Japanese Arts by Japan Arts Foundation (1994); 1st Asahi Beer Arts Awards by Asahi Beer Arts Foundation (2003); 60th Mainichi Art Prize (2018); and 69th Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts (2019).

This is the first solo exhibition of Rei Naito's work in Scandinavia.

PEDER LUND

Tjuvholmen allé 27, 0252 Oslo

pederlund.no

Yuka Kashihara @ Acquavella Galleries, Palm Beach - 'Stardust' Exhibition

Yuka Kashihara: Stardust

Acquavella Galleries, Palm Beach

October 15 - December 8, 2025 

"Everything is connected, and everything is one. Painting, for me, is a way of knowing who I am. Tracing that history back, it became clear to me that I, too, am made of stardust; and that realization felt profoundly natural. The primeval landscapes I have encountered in my life, too, if traced back far enough, were once stardust."

- Yuka Kashihara

Acquavella Galleries presents Stardust, a solo exhibition of fifteen paintings by the Japanese artist Yuka Kashihara in its Palm Beach gallery.

This suite of acrylic and oil paintings on canvas marks a continuation of the artist’s interest in imagining the otherworldly, while looking even farther to the cosmos. Her work is often sparked by instigating moments and views observed while traveling or walking, which she then blends with conjured vistas. In her new paintings, Kashihara explores our connection with the ancient and cosmic, combining the two ideas by exploring the origin of all organic matter, beginning deep in space.

Yuka Kashihara cites Marcus Chown’s book, The Magic Furnace, as an inspiration for her new work. He states: “Every atom in our bodies has an extraordinary history. Our blood, our food, our books, our clothes–everything contains atoms forged in blistering furnaces deep inside stars, which were blown into space by those stars’ cataclysmic explosions and deaths…The birth of every atom was marked by cosmic events on an enormous scale, against a backdrop of unimaginable heat and cold, brightness and darkness, space and time.” The artist’s newest body of work draws on this idea of celestial kinship.

In Universal Stardust (2025) and Universal Stardust - II (2025), the artist layers vivid shades of acrylic and oil that evoke watercolors in their blurred softness. The strokes and colors bleed and interconnect like the atoms that connect all organic matter. Kashihara simultaneously blends human interconnectedness with deep space, where clusters of atoms or constellations intertwine with what could be ancient flora and fauna deep on the ocean floor or from another planet.

Regarding this body of work, Yuka Kashihara also pays homage to her purposeful commitment to painting as exploration from a young age. The artist states: “When I was seventeen and unsure of my future, I made one clear decision: I would devote myself to painting. I pictured that wish sailing to the edge of the galaxy, like a handful of stardust cast into the night.”

Harnessing the boundless raw material of creation, Kashihara’s paintings offer a duality of the origin of life and its comic roots.

Yuka Kashihara: Stardust is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an essay by poet, critic, and curator John Yau.

Artist Yuka Kashihara (b. 1980)

Born in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan, Kashihara received her B.F.A. in Japanese Painting from the Musashino Art University in Tokyo in 2006 before moving to Germany that year. Studying at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Germany, she received her Meisterschüler (Master Graduate) in 2015.

ACQUAVELLA GALLERIES, PALM BEACH

340 Royal Poinciana Way, Palm Beach, FL 33480 

www.acquavellagalleries.com

Koki Tanaka Exhibition @ UCCA, Beijing - "Provisional Community"

Koki Tanaka: Provisional Community

UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing

September 27, 2025 - January 4, 2026

UCCA Center for Contemporary Art presents “Koki Tanaka: Provisional Community,” a solo exhibition by the Japanese contemporary artist. The exhibition surveys over twenty years of Koki Tanaka’s (b. 1975, Tochigi, Japan) practice, featuring more than ten artworks, including early video projects, and presenting for the first time a new commission by UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. The exhibition focuses on how Tanaka explores the complex relationships between people through temporary gatherings and open-ended collaboration. While encounters initiated by chance, crisis, or workshops are often brief, the flow and tension of human emotion still emerge in flux. Rather than providing definite answers, “Koki Tanaka: Provisional Community” creates situations that allow visitors to experience a “provisional” coexistence with one another in orchestrated situational settings. This exhibition is curated by UCCA Curator Neil Zhang. 

Koki Tanaka’s practice has evolved from an initial focus on the relationship between objects, to the interactions between people and objects, and ultimately to connections between people. His works across video, photography, site-specific installations, and thematic workshops capture everyday behaviors, objects, and ideas often overlooked or forgotten. These elements, through chance encounters or the removal of intended function, reveal hidden meanings and tensions. In Tanaka’s work, ordinary objects and actions act as catalysts rather than passive subjects of observation.

In his early work, the artist focused on the materiality of everyday items as a means of disrupting established cognitive frameworks. In 123456 (2003), a die continuously rolls and collides within a glass bottle in an endless loop of sound and image. This piece, through repetition and chance, constructs a non-linear viewing experience that transforms the seemingly trivial movements into a reflection of flow and uncertainty. Watch the Water Go Away (2006) captures the evaporation of water in near-still imagery. In this minimalist work, fleeting moments become the sole visual landscape, and time emerges as the primary medium. In Everything is Everything (2006), Tanaka and his assistants improvise with everyday objects on the street—brooms, rolls of paper, mattresses—liberating them from their intended uses to become both playful and subtly subversive agents that prompt viewers to reconsider relationships between things, between people and things, and between various objects themselves. These early experiments anticipate Tanaka’s later—and now current—engagement with collective dynamics, setting the stage for his ongoing exploration of human connection. 

Since 2011, Koki Tanaka has gradually shifted his artistic focus toward interpersonal connections, investigating how individual experiences circulate, collide, and dissolve within temporarily gathered groups through multi-participant workshops. He does not position himself as a “creator” in the conventional sense, but rather as a facilitator of a “moment”—setting the context and stepping back to observe as participants construct a provisional micro-society within an unpredictable, uncontrollable process.

Three representative works are presented in this exhibition, bringing forth multiple facets of this creative ethos. A Piano Played by Five Pianists at Once (First Attempt) (re-edited version) (2012/2025) transforms what was originally a solo act into a collaborative scenario requiring negotiation, adaptation, and mediation; A Poem Written by Five Poets at Once (First Attempt) (re-edited version) 2013/2025 captures the tension between individual style and collective outcome within shared creative language; A Pottery Produced by Five Potters at Once (Silent Attempt) (re-edited version) (2013/2025) presents a gradual dissolution of individual consciousness within a collective focus in a group creation. Through these multi-participant settings, complex relational and psychological dynamics emerge layer by layer to produce a sense of disappearance along with renewal: when all involved share an objective, individual presence seems to vanish at certain moments to leave a purity in collective action in its wake. 

In recent years, Tanaka’s moving image practice has increasingly turned toward broader social themes such as parenting and the lives of office workers. Reflective Notes (Reconfigured) (2021), adapted from his collection of essays, weaves together reorganized video archives and text to reflect on the fragility of human interdependence, as well as remind viewers that genuine change always begins in the subtle bonds between individuals and communities. Mobility and Extinction (2024) intertwines personal experience with public debate, drawing on interdisciplinary dialogue to prompt reflection on how, in a world of constant change and volatility, new forms of coexistence might be found across borders and species. In a work examining gender roles, divisions of domestic labor, and workplace power dynamics, Acting is Sharing Something Personal (2025) brings light to the challenges individuals face when confronting questions of identity and divergent values. The most recent creation featured in this exhibition, 10 Years (2025) is a commission by UCCA that brings together several narrators who had previously participated in his projects. Through their accounts of personal memories and social events, the work traces the crosscurrents of private lives and public history over the past decade.

The exhibition’s spatial design also continues the theme of “Provisional Community”: works are presented on minimalistic wooden structures instead of mounted on fixed walls, while chairs are scattered throughout the gallery can be freely moved by visitors. This opens opportunities for viewers to shift their vantage points at will—whether in gatherings or solitude. Through this openness and indeterminacy, “Koki Tanaka: Provisional Community” the exhibition becomes a “provisional community”—one that is continually in formation, yet always at the verge of disintegration. 

Artist Koki Tanaka

Koki Tanaka (b. 1975, Tochigi, Japan; lives and works in Kyoto) graduated from Tokyo Zokei University (BFA) in 2000 and Tokyo University of the Arts (MFA) in 2005. His major solo exhibitions include “Vulnerable Histories (A Road Movie)” (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2020); “Precarious Tasks” (Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou, 2019); “Vulnerable Histories (A Road Movie)” (Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich, 2018); “Provisional Studies (Working Title)” (Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, 2017); “Potters and Poets” (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2016); “Possibilities for being together. Their praxis.” (Art Tower Mito Contemporary Art Gallery, Mito-shi, Ibaraki, 2015); “A Vulnerable Narrator” (Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Berlin, 2015); “Abstract Speaking – Sharing Uncertainty and Collective Acts” (Japan Pavilion, the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013). His work has also been shown extensively in group exhibitions and biennales including “Antibodies” (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2021); “Though it’s dark, still I sing” (Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2021); “Every Step in the Right Direction” (Singapore Biennale, Singapore, 2019); “Taming Y/Our Passion” (Aichi Triennale, Aichi, Japan, 2019); “Action!” (Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich, 2017); “Viva Arte Viva” (the 57th Venice Biennale, 2017); “Trace of Existence” (UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2016); “Mobile M+: Moving Images” (M+, Hong Kong, 2015). His work is held in the collections of institutions including M+, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Van Abbemuseum, Netherlands. 

UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100016

ucca.org.cn

East Asian Art Rediscovered Treasures @ Cincinnati Art Museum

Rediscovered Treasures 

Cincinnati Art Museum

September 19, 2025 — January 18, 2026

This exhibition reveals the untold stories behind East Asian masterpieces long housed in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s (CAM) collection. Featuring approximately 60 objects—ranging from Japanese armor and Chinese scrolls to Korean lacquer—Rediscovered Treasures brings to light transformative discoveries made possible by decades of scholarship, archival research and conservation efforts. 

While many of the featured works entered the museum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they remained un-accessioned or misidentified due to a lack of staff expertise in Asian art at the time. Since 2002, when the museum formally established its Asian art department, ongoing research led by Hou-mei Sung, PhD, Curator of East Asian Art, has dramatically improved the understanding of these objects. Their rediscovery has not only reframed the museum’s collection, but has also illuminated Cincinnati’s early cultural ties to East Asia.

Among the exhibition’s highlights are three exceptional works: the fan-favorite Japanese bronze “magic mirror,” which reveals an image of Amida Buddha under special lighting, making CAM one of the few museums in the world to house such an object; a Qing dynasty portrait of a court lady, identified through research as an imperial portrait of Lady Nian, possibly painted by the Jesuit artist Giuseppe Castiglione; and a Meiji period sumo wrestler’s embroidered apron, recently linked to the tragic career of Otokoyama Osuke, a promising young wrestler immortalized in a ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Kuniaki II. Each piece offers a unique story of rediscovery that enriches the understanding of East Asian art and culture.

“This exhibition is both a reflection of CAM’s mission to preserve and interpret cultural heritage and a celebration of the exciting process of rediscovery,” said Hou-mei Sung. “Many of these works, once overlooked or mislabeled, now tell vibrant stories of art, of individual lives, and of historical connections that extend far beyond Cincinnati.”

The exhibition is organized in three thematic sections. Uncovering Hidden Gems spotlights artworks recovered from storage and newly identified, including Japanese scrolls linked to Cincinnati artist Robert Frederick Blum and samurai armor tied to CAM’s early supporters and a trailblazing Japanese doctor. Revealing Identities feature reclassified works with newly attributed artists, corrected origins and uncovered meanings. Preserving Legacies highlights the scientific and technical efforts behind preserving these treasures, with insights from CAM conservators Cecile Mear and Kelly Rectenwald.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

Thomas R. Schiff galleries (234 and 235)

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Aichi Triennale 2025 @ Seto City - Exhibited artists

Aichi Triennale 2025

A Time Between Ashes and Roses

@ Seto City

September 13 — November 30, 2025

The Aichi Triennale 2025 presents 11 artists across nine venues in Seto City, the heartland of one of Japan’s ceramic industries, known for adopting new techniques and cultures over the centuries. 

Please note that the artworks illustrating this post are intended to illustrate the work of each artist, but are not necessarily those presented at the Aichi Triennale 2025.

Sasaki Rui

"Subtle Intimacy (2012-2022)" 2022

Photo: Yasushi Ichikawa

Formerly a public bathhouse frequented by pottery workers, Nihon Kosen hosts Sasaki Rui’s (b. 1984, Japan) newly commissioned large translucent glass work Unforgettable Residues (2025), enclosing plants preserved as ashes that were collected across Seto City. 

Robert Andrew

"Presence" 2019

Installation view: ‘Presence’ IMA Belltower 

Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

Robert Andrew's (b. 1965, Australia) is a descendant of the Yawuru people, whose work investigates personal and family histories that have been denied or forgotten. Language in Buru (2025) and What Lies Within (2025), installed in the KASEN MINE CO., LTD., incorporate mechanical parts with Seto clay, and the layered mounds of earth slowly crumble, resembling the landscape of a clay quarry.

Adrián Villar Rojas

"Mi familia muerta (My Dead Family)" 2009

Photo by Carla Barbero

Adrián Villar Rojas (b. 1980, Argentine) is well known for his large-scale and site-specific installations. His work is exhibited at the former Seto Fukagawa Elementary School.

 

panpanya

「家の家」（7/8ページ）単行本『商店街のあゆみ』 2022 ※確認中

所収

panpanya (b. undisclosed, Japan) is a manga artist who has been active on the web, at doujinshi (self-published works) conventions and other outlets since the 2000s. The artist exhibited in Seto at Matsuchiyokan (3-3 Suehirocho, Seto City - About a 15-minute walk from Owari Seto Station on the Meitetsu Seto Line)

Michael Rakowitz

"The invisible enemy should not exist (Lamassu of Nineveh)" 2018

Photo: Gautier DeBlonde

© Courtesy of the Mayor of London 

Michael Rakowitz (b. 1973, USA) takes over the UMEMURA Shoten, a wholesale store still operating today specializing in tea ceramics, to present seven panel works from the series The invisible enemy should not exist (Northwest Palace of Kalhu) (2023), made from materials such as Arabic newspapers and food packaging, reflecting the story of Mesopotamian artifacts lost after the war that parallels the history of his Jewish family emigrating from Iraq to America. 

Oki Junko

"anthology" 2023

FUJI TEXTILE WEEK, Photo by Kenryou Gu

Oki Junko’s (b. 1963, Japan) anthology (2025) transforms the space of Mufuuan with a mass of red fabric embroidered into a spiral and suspended from the ceiling. Its threads connect to one hundred thousand donated needles, which stick out from the clay beneath. The work conjures up the ‘thousand-stitch belts’ held together with a thousand red stitches that were made for Japanese soldiers.

Miverva Cuevas

"The Trust" 2023

Courtesy of Kurimanzutto Mexico, New York

Shaikha Al Mazrou

"Accordion Structure" 2022

Minerva Cuevas (b. 1975, Mexico) and Shaikha Al Mazrou (b. 1988, UAE) exhibited their artworks at the Seto City Art Museum.

Maitha Abdalla

"EVAPORATING SUNS" 2023

Maitha Abdalla (b. 1989, UAE) and the duo Selma & Sofiane Ouissi (b. 1975 & 1972, Tunisia) presented their works at the Seto Ceramics and Glass Art Center. Emirati multi-disciplinary artist, Maitha Abdalla’s practice combines film, photography, sculpture, painting, drawing and performance.

Tomiyasu Yuma

"The Doom" 2021

Photo: Masanobu Nishino

Courtesy of Art Front Gallery

Tomiyasu Yuma (b. 1983, Japan) creates works that explore the boundary between reality and unreality, using as motifs unseen things and matters that have not been scientifically elucidated, such as psychic and paranormal phenomena and dreams.

Seto City

Photo courtesy of the Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee

Seto City

Photo courtesy of the Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee

About Seto City

Seto City is located roughly 20km north-east of central Nagoya, with a population of approximately 130,000. It is surrounded by low mountains and has more than a thousand years of tradition of pottery and ceramics. Blessed with an abundance supply of high-quality clay, the city’s ancestors established it as a ceramic capital by flexibly adopting new techniques and cultures. The city’s name is indeed the origin of the word seto-mono, a synonym for ceramics. In 2017, Seto was registered to Japan Heritage as part of Rokkoyō (the Six Ancient Kilns) along with Tokoname, Echizen, Shigaraki, Tamba, and Bizen. Today, numerous ceramicists and creatives are producing new works every day in kilns and studios in the city. The pottery city’s unique characteristic can be seen everywhere, such as walls and fences built with potter’s tools and bridge rails decorated with ceramics. 

AICHI TRIENNALE

aichitriennale.jp

The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea @ Baltimore Museum of Art

The Way of Nature

Art from Japan, China, and Korea

Baltimore Museum of Art

September 21, 2025 - March 8, 2026

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) presents The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea, which draws on the museum’s extensive holdings to consider the importance of nature in East Asian cultures. The exhibition features more than 40 objects, from magnificent ink drawings to beautifully crafted stoneware and poignant contemporary photographs and prints. Collectively, the works reflect on nature as a vital source of creative inspiration and spiritual connection and consider human existence within the complexity of the vast natural world across centuries and into the present day. The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea is part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative, which explores the relationships between art and the environment.

“The Way of Nature offers an insightful look at the intertwining roots of artistic expression and the experience of the natural world through vibrant works from the BMA’s Asian art collection. It’s an exciting opportunity to see objects on view for the first time, or in a long time, through a lens that is both accessible and meaningful, as many of us seek connection through and to nature,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “As the BMA focuses on expanding its collection with the work of artists from around the globe, we are excited to continue to share more of our holdings, and the stories they contain, with our community.”

The Way of Nature is organized around four overarching themes that engage with elemental aspects of the natural world and human intervention within it. The exhibition opens with a section that examines depictions, interpretations, and connections to the qualities of air, water, and stone. Among the highlights is a handmade Fireman's Coat (hikeshi banten) with Hawk and Waves (Japan, early- to mid-20th century) by an unidentified artist. The intricately sewn object depicts a hawk soaring above turbulent waves, suggesting that the firefighter who chose the design sought the protective powers of water, strength, and keen vision. During a fire, the beautiful imagery would have been worn on the interior, only to be revealed once the fire was extinguished. The section also includes works such as the evocative ink drawing Water and Mountain Landscape (China, 1955) by the artist Huang Junbi and the densely decorated wood and jade sculpture Miniature Mountain with Longevity Motifs (China, late 18th - early 19th century) by an unidentified artist. 

The second section explores the significance of the changing seasons as visual indicators of nature’s transformative power, whether in the experience of wild terrain or in meticulously tended gardens. Across East Asia, emblems of the seasons, such as plums for the spring and chrysanthemums for the fall, are both often shared within communities and widely referenced in art. A case in this section includes a range of objects featuring plum blossoms, such as the hanging scroll Plum Branch and Full Moon (Japan, 1905-1915) by Kamisaka Sekka and the stoneware Bowl Decorated with Plum Branch and Crescent Moon (China, 13th century) by an unidentified artist. The section also includes a stunning Buddhist Priest's Robe (Kesa) in Karaori with Floral Designs (Japan, 1750-1868) by an unidentified artist.

The Way of Nature continues with works that capture human intrusion into the natural realm, as artists reveal humanity’s environmental impact through both imagery of calamitous events and in more subtle and ambiguous scenes. In his series Between Mountains and Water (2014–2017), Chinese artist Zhang Kechun examined the effects of human activities on the landscape in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, while Japanese artist Leiko Shiga documented the aftermath of Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the poignant photo series Rasen Kaigan. The exhibition concludes with consideration of the spiritual transcendence that can be found in nature. This final section is anchored by the eight-panel screen Ten Symbols of Long Life (Korea, mid- to late 19th century) by an unidentified artist. The complex screen incorporates eight separate paintings to convey a wish for longevity, as embodied through such symbols as cranes, bamboo, water, and sun.

The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea is curated by Frances Klapthor, BMA Associate Curator of Asian Art.

BMA - BALTIMORE ART MUSEUM 

10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218

artbma.org

Yoshitomo Nara @ Hayward Gallery, London - Retrospective Exhibition

Yoshitomo Nara

Hayward Gallery, London

10 June - 31 August 2025

Portrait of Yoshitomo Nara 

© the artist and the Yoshitomo Nara Foundation

Photo: Ryoichi Kawajiri 

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara 

Harmless Kitty, 1994

Photo: Mark Blower 

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara

Missing in Action, 1999 

Photo: Mark Blower 

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara

Miss Margaret, 2016 

Photo: Mark Blower 

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

The Hayward Gallery presents the first UK solo exhibition at a public art gallery by leading Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara. The major retrospective invites viewers to immerse themselves in the intriguing world of one of today’s most celebrated artists through four decades of work, including recent paintings and drawings, as well as sculptures and iconic portraits brought to life through richly layered colours. Expanding on the blockbuster exhibition from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Yoshitomo Nara offers a window into the inner-workings of the artist, providing an insight into how Nara’s life experiences are intrinsically linked to his output through core themes and motifs.

Yoshitomo Nara is best-known for his striking images of child-like figures and animals with large heads and wide eyes that challenge viewers with their direct gaze and defiant stance. Both captivating and ominous, these characters exemplify Nara’s distinctive style that is recognised across the world. Although primarily a painter, he also works with a variety of materials across collage, sculpture, drawing, and installation to explore ideas of home, isolation, nature, peace, resistance and freedom.

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara 

at the Hayward Gallery 

Photo: Mark Blower

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara 

at the Hayward Gallery 

Photo: Mark Blower

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara 

at the Hayward Gallery 

Photo: Mark Blower

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara 

at the Hayward Gallery 

Photo: Mark Blower

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara 

at the Hayward Gallery 

Photo: Mark Blower

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara 

at the Hayward Gallery 

Photo: Mark Blower

Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery

Organised thematically, the exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of Yoshitomo Nara’s artistic evolution, illuminating his deep interest in humanity with works inspired by the people, emotions and places that he has encountered throughout his life.

Nara’s formative years in Japan’s northern Tōhoku region were spent drawing and listening to the Far East Network (FEN): the radio station for American troops stationed in Japan during the Vietnam War. Throughout the retrospective, viewers can see how Nara’s art often draws from his lifelong love of music, ranging from the antiwar folksongs by American singer-songwriters heard on FEN, to the melancholy sounds of the blues and, more recently, punk and new wave.

Studying and living in Germany also proved crucial in establishing Nara’s style. Upon visiting Germany in 1980, he discovered the masters of European modernism, the early Middle Ages and the Renaissance which influenced his later works. Enrolling at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Yoshitomo Nara was unable to speak German and used his art to express himself, utilising techniques learnt from Neo-Expressionist artist A. R. Penck. Nara’s big-eyed characters were created in this period, with early works like Ships in Girl (1992) countering the popular Japanese kawaii (cute) style through their mysterious expressions and rebellious demeanour.

Yoshitomo Nara

Under the Tree, 2006 

Acrylic and colored pencil on corrugated board, 

30.5 x 23.8 cm

Courtesy of the artist

Yoshitomo Nara

Fire, 2009 

Acrylic on wood, 90 x 90cm

Courtesy of the artist and Yuichi Kawasaki Collection

Yoshitomo Nara 

Power in a Union, 2024

Acrylic on wood, 104.5 x 90.7 x 6 (1.2) cm

Courtesy the artist

Yoshitomo Nara 

Banging the Drum, 2020

Acrylic and colored pencil on corrugated board, 

186 x 121.5 cm

Courtesy the artist and private collection

The exhibition highlights the political and societal discourse within Nara’s work, with disasters such as the Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi power plant failure fueling his artistic response to the widespread feelings of loss and pain caused by these events. Works like From the Bomb Shelter (2017), which shows a child tentatively emerging from an underground bunker, reflect his changed viewpoint of the world. Meanwhile, recent paintings such as Midnight Tears (2023) emanate uncertainty through the ethereal, fragmented touches of colour and tear-filled eyes of the child it depicts.

Yung Ma, Senior Curator of the Hayward Gallery, says: “We have the tendency to overuse the word ‘iconic’ but in the case of Yoshitomo Nara, I can hardly think of a more apt description. Nara’s wide-eyed figures have become some of the most recognised motifs in contemporary art. His work engages with us emotionally, exemplifying how the power of art can transcend beyond the walls of a gallery to reach people far and wide.”

Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, says: “‘Rendered in an appealing and deceptively simple style, Nara’s portraits of imaginary characters evince a psychological immediacy that bridges the gap between high art and popular culture. Conveying a compelling tenderness that speaks to our desire for connection, his pictures also tap into widespread feelings of alienation, anxiety, and resistance. This is a rare achievement and it has made him one of the pivotal figures in contemporary art over the past 30 years.’”

Yoshitomo Nara is curated by Hayward Gallery Senior Curator, Yung Ma, with Assistant Curator, Katie Guggenheim, and Curatorial Assistant, Charlotte dos Santos.

HAYWARD GALLERY

Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London 

www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Ayako Rokkaku @ Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid - "For the Moments that you feel Paradise" Exhibition

Ayako Rokkaku 

For the Moments that you feel Paradise

Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid 

23 May - 7 September 2025

Ayako Rokkaku

live-painting

Image © Francis Tsang

© Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie

Ayako Rokkaku

Untitled, 2021

Acrylic on canvas, 117 x 117 cm

Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie

Ayako Rokkaku

Untitled, 2001-2006

Acrylic on cardboard

Variable dimensions

Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie

Ayako Rokkaku

Untitled, 2024

Bronze and acrylic, 43 x 30 x 30 cm

Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie

The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum is presenting an exhibition dedicated to the Japanese artist AYAKO ROKKAKU (born Chiba, 1982) which traces her artistic evolution through around thirty early and recent works, including paintings, sculptures and installations. For the Moments that you feel Paradise is the latest event in the exhibition programme devoted to the collection of Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza, which includes two paintings by the artist. It reveals a universe in constant transformation, in which past and present intermingle and where paradise is not a destination but a fleeting sensation, just beyond reach but always present.

Known for her large-format canvases painted with her fingers, Ayako Rokkaku is an artist who creates immersive worlds that move between the tangible and the imaginary. Her dream figures first appeared in her earliest paintings, which include motifs that have subsequently recurred in her work, such as fish. Decades later these elements have reemerged in new compositions which reflect the artist’s ongoing fascination with change. In Rokkaku’s work nothing is fixed: figures emerge and dissolve, evoking the way clouds constantly change in the sky.

A self-taught artist, Ayako Rokkaku began painting at the age of 19. Experimentation with techniques and materials led her to apply acrylic paint directly with her fingers, a process that she finds natural and essential, and which adds energy to her artistic process. At the outset she employed cardboard as a support, which she tore before or after painting in order to create organic and spontaneous forms and which offered her more freedom than canvas or industrial paper. In her quest for her own style Ayako Rokkaku has continued to experiment with different ideas, such as highlighting motifs with bright pink or including motifs based on creatures with large eyes.

Ayako Rokkaku

Untitled, 2011

Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie

Ayako Rokkaku

Untitled, 2012

Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie

In 2011 Ayako Rokkaku moved from Japan to Berlin where she started to use pencil and crayons and also employed more childlike lines in her compositions with the aim of maintaining both a child’s gaze and the world of childhood. Interested in Abstract Expressionism and artists such as Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly, whose work she had encountered years before in New York, she now placed more importance on abstract backgrounds in her paintings, in addition to figures or motifs applied to them. Playing with several layers, Rokkaku started adding colours and shapes in front of and behind a principal figure. Multicolored clouds now start to appear in these backgrounds, one of the natural elements most present in the work of this artist, who is attracted to their changing shapes.

In recent years Ayako Rokkaku has also focused on sculpture, firstly in wood and then in bronze, a new approach which poses the challenge of capturing the shapes, style and energy transmitted by her paintings but in three dimensions.

Ayako Rokkaku

Untitled, 2024

Bronze patined, 83 x 57 x 45 cm

Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie

Ayako Rokkaku

Untitled, 2024

Acrylic on canvas, 90 x 60 cm

Courtesy of the artist and König Galerie

Ayako Rokkaku

Paradise, 2025

Acrylic on canvas, 300 x 600 cm

Blanca y Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection

The artist’s most recent and ambitious work is Paradise (2025), a monumental 3 x 6-metre diptych that pays tribute to Tintoretto’s canvas entitled The Paradise in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. This is the first time that Ayako Rokkaku has created a work inspired by another one. Painted around 1588 to decorate the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Doge's Palace in Venice, Tintoretto's canvas depicts Christ crowning the Virgin beneath the dove of the Holy Spirit and surrounded by angels, cherubim and the religious hierarchies, all floating among clouds and stars. In her version Ayako Rokkaku maintains the dynamic movement of the clouds while expressing her own Paradise in which Christ, crowned with delicate flowers, offers Mary a garland. The work is a compendium of the artist's universe: fish gliding alongside angels; seated rabbits forming circles and ducklings flying up to the sky.

Ayako Rokkaku does not usually make use of sketches, or a predetermined palette and the starting point of her painting is usually improvisation. In addition, since the outset she has made use of “live painting” with the intention of sharing the experience of artistic creation with the public. The artist will offer a pictorial performance at both the inauguration and during the period the exhibition is open.

Publications: Catalogue with texts by Danaï Loukas and Guillermo Solana

Curator: Guillermo Solana, Artistic Director of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Coordinator: Paula Luengo, head of the Department of Exhibitions, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

MUSEO NACIONAL THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA

THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA NATIONAL MUSEUM

Paseo del Prado, 8. 28014, Madrid

www.museothyssen.org

Gauguin & Kihara @ Glyptotek, Copenhagen - "Gauguin & Kihara – First Impressions" Exhibition

Gauguin & Kihara – First Impressions

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

8 May, 2025 - 6 December 2026

Paul Gauguin

Vahine no te Tiare. Woman with the Flower, 1891

MIN 1828 © Glyptoteket

Paul Gauguin

Arearea no Varua ino. The Amusement of the Evil Spirit, 1894

MIN 1832 © Glyptoteket

Throughout his career, Paul Gauguin pursued the ideal conditions for life as an artist. Yet wherever he went, reality seldom lived up to his expectations. When reality fell short, however, imagination was given free rein in his artistic worlds. This is the starting point for the Glyptotek’s upcoming collection presentation, Gauguin & Kihara – First Impressions, which also features an important new acquisition grappling explicitly with Gauguin’s work.

 

The Glyptotek holds one of the world’s finest collections of works by the French artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). In recent years, many of the museum’s 58 Gauguin pieces—including paintings, woodcarvings, drawings and ceramics—have been on loan to renowned museums across the globe. Now, they return home to be shown together in a presentation, opening on 8 May, offering new perspectives on Gauguin’s well-known works.

 

This spring, the Gauguin collection is joined by the Japanese-Sāmoan contemporary artist Yuki Kihara (b. 1975) and her video work First Impressions: Paul Gauguin, recently acquired by the museum. Together, their works open a dialogue across time, cultural divides and vast oceanic distances.

Paul Gauguin

Landscape from Brittany with Breton Women, 1888 

MIN 1826 © Glyptoteket

Paul Gauguin

Shepherdess from Brittany, 1889

MIN 1827 © Glyptoteket

 

Paul Gauguin: The eternal pursuit

Gauguin’s futile search for the ideal conditions for an artist’s life took him from Paris to Copenhagen, through Normandy, Brittany and Arles, and onwards to the then-French colonies of Martinique, Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. When reality proved disappointing, he let his imagination run free, creating artistic worlds on his own terms. ‘Who cares about accuracy!!’ he declared. The Glyptotek delves not only into this artistic journey but also into the physical, political and historical contexts that shaped it, examining how Gauguin depicted the places and cultures he encountered along the way.

Paul Gauguin

Skaters in Frederiksberg Garden, 1884 

MIN 3213 © Glyptoteket

“Gauguin moved through the world in a way not unlike today’s tourists. Like the traveller who crops out souvenir stalls from their holiday photos and seeks out restaurants touted as “hidden gems” in various guidebooks, Gauguin pursued the idea of authenticity, often viewing his destinations through the lens of existing narratives and images. Having spent nearly a decade in the South Pacific, Gauguin may have lived too long in the region to be called a tourist, but this comparison opens a conversation in which Gauguin’s works are not solely a matter of his distinctive colours, uniform surfaces and bold contours. They also offer insight into the cultural, political and social contexts in which they were created, challenging us still today to reflect on our own time. Through what lens do we, as modern-day tourists and cultural consumers, view the world?” says Anna Kærsgaard Gregersen, curator of the French collection at the Glyptotek.

The collection presentation will be shown in the Henning Larsen building, which will, in coming years, house an extensive selection of the Glyptotek’s French collections. This initiative is part of the museum’s commitment to strengthening the presentation of French art and culture, its collection being among the most significant in the Nordic region.

Yuki Kihara: Striking new acquisition

Yuki Kihara (b. 1975)

First Impressions Paul Gauguin, 2018 

© Courtesy of Yuki Kihara, 

the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,

the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen and Milford Galle

The Glyptotek has acquired a contemporary artwork that offers a modern interpretation of one of Western art history’s most iconic—and most controversial—artists. The new acquisition, and the museum’s first video work, First Impressions: Paul Gauguin (2018), is by the Japanese-Sāmoan contemporary artist Yuki Kihara.

The video work was co-commissioned by the Glyptotek and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. It was previously shown as part of the Glyptotek’s special exhibition Paul Gauguin – Why Are You Angry? (2020), which later toured to Alte Nationalgalerie (2022). That same year, the work was included in the 59th Venice Biennale, where Kihara represented Aotearoa New Zealand. Now, the work returns to the Glyptotek as a newly conceived installation and permanent part of the museum’s collection.

“I remember thinking how strange it was to be in front of [Paul Gauguin’s] paintings, as if time and space had collapsed. Here we were as artists from two different parts of the world having a dialogue in two different moments in history,” says Yuki Kihara, reflecting on her first real encounter with Gauguin’s works.

Presented in the format of a talk show, the video work features a host and panel who are shown reproductions of Gauguin paintings from Tahiti (including two from the museum’s own collection), after which they share their first impressions. As the conversation unfolds, Gauguin fades into the background, giving way to the participants’ own perspectives and speculative stories about the paintings’ models.

 

Both Yuki Kihara and the talk show participants belong to the Fa’afafine and Fa’atama communities, the Sāmoan counterparts to Māhū, a Tahitian term referring to individuals endowed with spiritual gifts from more than one gender. In colonial times, the Māhū were banned by missionaries, but researchers believe that several of Gauguin’s figures may depict Māhū—a theory also discussed among the panel.

“With humour and gravity, Kihara directs the colonial gaze back towards the West, reclaiming her community’s power to shape their own narrative. This acquisition initiates vital conversations across time and place, holding the museum and Western art history accountable, and challenging us to acknowledge historical nuance and the contemporary voices traditionally excluded from discussions surrounding Gauguin’s complex oeuvre,” explains Anna Kærsgaard Gregersen.

YUKI KIHARA (b. 1975) is a Japanese-Sāmoan interdisciplinary artist based in Sāmoa. Her practice seeks to challenge one-sided historical narratives through performance, sculpture, video, photography and curatorial practice. With a particular focus on postcolonial narratives and representation in Oceania, she explores issues of race, gender, power and cultural appropriation. Yuki Kihara represented Aotearoa New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) with Paradise Camp, and she has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide, including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Powerhouse Museum and the Sainsbury Centre. Her works are found in the collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery of Australia and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Dantes Plads 7 • 1556 Copenhagen

www.glyptoteket.com