Category: イベント

Top image: Untitled (Faded gold), 2025, Gold leaf, Urushi, hemp cloth, 2-way tricot, polyethylene foam cord | Kanshitsu-technique, 25 x 19.6 x 18.8 cm, Photo: Takeru Kotoda

2.18 Tue. – 3.9 Sun. 2025
Venue: CADAN YURAKUCHO
Address: 1F Kokusai Building, 3-1-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Opening hours: Tue-Fri 11-19pm, Sat, Sun, national holidays 11-17pm
Closed: Mon (or the following weekday if the Monday is a public holiday)

Opening reception: 2.18 (Tue) 18:00-20:00

Genta Ishizuka’s devoted pursuit of the possibilities of abstract form evokes an instinctive sense of physicality based on the membrane created by lacquer. Ishizuka gives form to the sap-derived material that resonates with its inherent nature and through the spatial composition of his Taxis series, which gives life to the dynamism intrinsic to the material’s lustrous surface, this exhibition will present a lineup of all new works that showcase his recent developments, which brim with vitality and have grown ever more captivating. We invite you for an evocative encounter with Ishizuka’s singular plastic expression, which captures the primordial beauty that emerges from natural material’s innate textures and phenomena.

Artist Statement
My fascination with the fetishistic texture of lacquer has inspired my artistic production. The ambigious depth and texture of the membrane achieved through the layered processes of applying and polishing lacquer allow me to project emotions and unconsciousness as well as a tactile corporeality through the expression of its nebulous surface.
Lacquer, derived from the sap of trees, cannot hold form on its own due to its liquid nature. It requires a substrate; only after application can its form hold independently. In creating these substrates, I search for forms and expressions that the lacquer seeks to embody. By engaging with the phenomena and fortuity of the lacquer, I try to avoid asserting too much control and instead work within the delicate balance between myself and the material. (Genta Ishizuka)

Genta Ishizuka
Born in Kyoto in 1982, Genta Ishizuka earned a BFA from Kyoto City University of Arts, during which time he participated in an exchange program at the Royal College of Art, London. He graduated with a MFA in Urushi Lacquering from Kyoto City University of Arts in 2008. Selected exhibitions: 2024 “The Future of Artisanal Beauty”, TERRADA ART COMPLEX II BONDED GALLERY, Tokyo, and Kennin-ji Temple, Kyoto / 2024 “LOEWE Lamps”, Palazzo Citterio, Milan / 2023 “Winds and Waves of Lacquer – The Evolution of Urushi Expression (Shippū dogō: genzai wo kakenukeru kyūshitsu hyōgen)”, Wajima Museum of Urushi Art, Ishikawa / 2023 “Visionaries: Making Another Perspective”, Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art, Kyoto. Selected awards: Incentive Prize, The 42nd Kyoto Prefectural Culture Prize by Kyoto Prefecture (2024), Grand-prix at LOEWE Craft Prize (2019), and The Best Young Artist Award by City of Kyoto (2019).
Upcoming Exhibitions and Art Fairs Featuring the Artist in 2025 [Genta Ishizuka will be represented by ARTCOURT Gallery at Art Fair Tokyo 2025, Tokyo International Forum, Tokyo, Mar. 7-9], Solo Exhibition [ARTCOURT Gallery, June – July], and more.

Top image: A horse in the room, 2024, Oil on canvas, 194 × 324 cm 

2.18 Tue. – 3.9 Sun. 2025
Venue: CADAN YURAKUCHO
Address: 1F Kokusai Building, 3-1-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Opening hours: Tue-Fri 11-19pm, Sat, Sun, national holidays 11-17pm
Closed: Mon (or the following weekday if the Monday is a public holiday)

Opening reception: 2.18 (Tue) 18:00-20:00

Imura art gallery is pleased to present Kanna Takase‘s solo exhibition Read your Diary at CADAN Yurakucho.

Takase’s practice involves taking notes about occurrences and things that bother her in everyday life, putting them into words, and then creating paintings based on those words. By taking peoples’ innermost feelings that cannot be communicated in words and replacing them with animals, plants, and objects depicted in a vibrant style that engenders a perceptual gap between the paintings and the original feelings, she finds stories that are humorous despite their disturbing content.

This exhibition features major works that Takase presented in December 2024 as the guest artist in Kyoto Art for Tomorrow 2025, as well as new works created this year. Takase’s paintings give form to her words, and can be viewed as if reading a diary.

Artist Statement
In the course of our lives, we all have similar complex experiences, and there are many things that we can share. The title of this exhibition, “Read Your Diary,” alludes to my hope that viewers will enjoy layering their own everyday lives onto the objects and animals in my paintings, as if finding themselves in the pages of another person’s diary.
Kanna Takase

Top image: Reflection #29, 2024, Oil, alkyd resin on canvas, 162x162cm, Photo: Takeru Koroda

2.18 Tue – 3.9 Sun, 2025,
Venue: CADAN YURAKUCHO
Address: 1F Kokusai Building, 3-1-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Opening hours: Tue-Fri 11-19pm, Sat, Sun, national holidays 11-17pm
Closed: Mon (or the following weekday if the Monday is a public holiday)

Opening reception: 2.18 (Tue) 18:00-20:00

ARTCOURT Gallery are pleased to present new works by Seishu Niihira, who explores temporal and spatial expressions of painting with an experimental approach through themes of the passage of time and principles in optics layered onto our modern reality inundated with images and information. His Reflection series, which he has continued to create since the early stages of his career, depicts two contrasting images that erode one another, generating a noise-like interference. In his new works, Niihira’s motif is the generative process of portraiture-trained artificial intelligence through which he probes the duality of the contrasting aspects inherent in all things.

Artist Statement
In Buddhist terminology, the concept of ni-ni fu-ni suggests that opposing elements can coexist, like the front and back of a single sheet of paper or the qualities of good and evil within a single person. Similarly, in quantum mechanics, all things are said to possess both particle and wave properties. The idea that things can embody contradictory dualities resonates deeply with my own experiences and has become a central theme in my artistic practice.
In my Reflection series, I overlapped two images as they reflected off and permeated through a windowpane, which merged into a single distorted composition. In this series, I have layered two AI-generated images trained on portraiture. Although not a stark binary opposition, the images are generated from the same training data but under different learning parameters, which allow for ‘alternative possibilities’ to confront one another. Human figures drift about within interfering waves of probability; this is what I see as a genuine portrait of the present.
（Seishu Niihira）

Seishu Niihira
Born in Osaka, 1988. 2014 M.A., Fine Art, Kyoto City University of Arts, Painting Course.
Selected Exhibitions：2023 “MEET YOUR ART FESTIVAL 2023”, TERRADA B&C Hall, Tokyo / 2022 “ACG eyes 7: RECORDS”, ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka / 2022 “Kyoto Art for Tomorrow 2022” [Institut français du Japon – Kansai Prize] , The Museum of Kyoto / 2018 “Seishu Niihira: DiVISION” [Solo exhibition], ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka
Upcoming Exhibitions and Art Fairs Featuring the Artist in 2025 [Seishu Niihira will be represented by ARTCOURT Gallery at Art Fair Tokyo 2025, Tokyo International Forum, Mar. 7-9], Solo Exhibition “Phantom Paint” [ARTCOURT Gallery, Mar. 22 – Apr. 26], and more.

2024.9.18 (Wed) – 10.5 (Sat)
Venue: CADAN YURAKUCHO
Opening hours: Tue-Fri 11-19pm, Sat, Sun, national holidays 11-17pm
Closed: Mon (or the following weekday if the Monday is a public holiday)
Address: 1F Kokusai Building, 3-1-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

Opening reception: 9.18 (Wed) 18:00-20:00
Performance by Ryuichi Ohira：9.18 (Wed) 19:00-

Artists
Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery
Jiro Yoshihara、Sadamasa Motonaga、Kazuo Shiraga、Shozo Shimamoto、Takesada Matsutani、Etsuko Nakatsuji

NANZUKA
Tetsuya Nakamura、Hiroki Tsukuda、Ryuichi Ohira、Makoto Taniguchi、Kenichiro Fukumoto、Kotaro Abe、Yoshiki Muramatsu、Ryunosuke Okazaki

Curation
Akihito Inoue

NANZUKA is pleased to present the joint exhibition GUTAI x POP UNDERGROUND which collaborated with Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery at CADAN Yurakucho. The exhibition is curated by Akihito Inoue.

Jiro Yoshihara, founder and leader of the postwar art movement Gutai, inspired and challenged younger members: “Do not imitate others” and instead “create what has never been done before.” His words gave these artists the courage and confidence to fashion their own means of expression and take unique artistic paths. Free from the influence of others, they could listen to their inner voice and work to embody it.

NANZUKA takes a broader perspective, supporting practitioners who have only been recognized outside the Japanese art scene and giving them a platform in the global art world. In an academic manner, it connects the creative energies of contemporary art, pop culture, and related fields like design, illustration, street art, manga, fashion, and music.

GUTAI x POP UNDERGROUND is a collaboration between six Gutai artists and eight emerging artists from NANZUKA. It explores how the individuality and creativity demonstrated by members of Gutai have influenced contemporary artists, and how those artists continue to expand the scope of expression. The exhibition draws on Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery’s Gutai collection, including works by Jiro Yoshihara, who is known for his circle motifs; Sadamasa Motonaga, whose interest in the mysteries of nature inspired him to pour paint directly onto canvas, resulting in abstractions that evoke the flow of rivers and cell division; Shozo Shimamoto, who produced some of Gutai’s most radical works, including performances throwing paint-filled bottles against canvas and “holes” made by puncturing newspaper-covered canvas; Kazuo Shiraga, whose dissatisfaction with traditional painting inspired his foot-painting technique, in which he hangs from a rope and paints a canvas on the floor using his feet; Paris-based Takesada Matsutani, who has been creating works for over half a century by pouring vinyl glue onto canvas then blackening it with pencils; and Etsuko Nakatsuji, once an ad designer and now a prolific artist working across painting, sculpture, and printmaking—with the human form as her frequent motif.

From NANZUKA are works by Tetsuya Nakamura, who studied lacquer at Tokyo University of the Arts and has gone on to make various forms exploring how visual information can influence living beings; Hiroki Tsukuda, whose geometric compositions collage urban landscapes, architecture, and natural and symbolic elements—all depicted with a futuristic tinge; Ryuichi Ohira, who returns to the inherent properties of materials and constructs “undefined forms” that channel the primal, irrational human impulse to create; Makoto Taniguchi, who seeks to capture his own sense of reality by focusing on the in-between, the invisible yet concrete things, and the indescribable sensations that exist beyond such binaries as creator and viewer, image and material, and real and virtual; Kenichiro Fukumoto, who draws inspiration from plants, spores, cells, and fossils for his oil paintings, drawings, and sculptures that combine woodcarving and ceramics; Kotaro Abe, who mixes pigments and mediums with ingredients commonly found in everyday food—like black sesame and tapioca flour—to produce his own “paint”; Yoshiki Muramatsu, who draws influence from a wide range of postwar and contemporary culture to make his illustrations, flyers, posters, photographs, videos, and animations; and Ryunosuke Okazaki, both an artist whose work explores rituals and acts of prayer and a fashion designer with a vision unfettered by conventional frameworks.

We hope you enjoy the exhibition.

CADAN Showcase 01
NEWSPACE / NEWCOLLABORATION
2020/7/17 Fri. – 08/09 Sun.
Open Tue.-Fri. 11AM-7PM, Sat, Sun, National Holiday 11AM-5PM
Closed on Monday

A new gallery CADAN YURAKUCHO will open with a series of group exhibition entitled “CADAN Showcase” curated by four gallerists from CADAN member.

CADAN Showcase01 NEWSPACE / NEWCOLLABORATION
curated by Tomoko Ashikawa (WAITINGROOM)

Artist（Gallery）
Kei Imazu（ANOMALY）
Rieko Otake（Tomio Koyama Gallery）
Simon Fujiwara（TARO NASU）
Tomokazu Matsuyama（KOTARO NUKAGA）
Daisuke Ohba（SCAI THE BATHHOUSE）
Aki Kondo（ShugoArts）
Taro Izumi（Take Ninagawa）
Takuro Kuwata（KOSAKU KANECHIKA）
Enrico Isamu Oyama (Takuro Someya Contemporary Art)
exonemo（WAITINGROOM）

（L）Kei Imazu 《Untitled 5》 (2016), Oil on canvas,  600 x 600 mm 
（R）Rieko Otake 《Tomodachi》(2008), Wood, 960 x 360 x 310 mm

（L）Simon Fujiwara 《Fabulous Beasts (Midnight Mink)》(2016) Shaved fur coat on wooden stretcher, 1000 x 950 x 20 mm 
（R）Tomokazu Matsuyama 《April Possibility》(2020), Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 915 x 915 mm

（L）Daisuke Ohba 《METEOR PAINTING》(2018) Acrylic on linen, iron meteorite, 500 x 500 x 45 mm
（R）Aki Kondo《Child Chasing the Light》(2020) Acrylic on canvas, 410 x 318 mm

（L）Taro Izumi 《Cartilage Flag》(2020)  © Taro Izumi, Courtesy of Take Ninagawa, Tokyo
（R）Takuro Kuwata《Untitled》(2017) Porcelain, stone, glaze, pigment, gold, h.30.5 x 35.0 x 36.5 cm, Photo by Keizo Kioku, ©Takuro Kuwata, Courtesy of KOSAKU KANECHIKA

（L）Enrico Isamu Oyama《FFIGURATI #137》(2016) Mechanical pencil, crackle medium and latex paint on canvas mounted on wood panel, 505 x 405 mm 
（R）exonemo　《I randomly love you / hate you》(2018) LCD monitors, android, Dimension variable