2025.5.24 – 6.21
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday

Shinichiro Kano (b. 1982) paints motifs such as playing cards, dice, and mazes made from twigs arranged on the floor, altering their perspectives, scales, and relationships. In doing so, a work that may appear complete on its own begins to take on a more enigmatic atmosphere and symbolic meaning through its relationship with other paintings. It is as if these connections hint at complex narratives hidden behind everyday objects, or suggest the existence of underlying principles that reveal the workings of the world.

“By adding new elements to the objects and strokes I have drawn so far, I arrange them on the canvas as if forming a coherent sentence. The composition of the painting incorporates various layers of time and space, and I repeatedly copy and paste fragments from the painting onto other canvases, generating new connections and continuously transforming them into different meanings. Just as individual letters have no meaning on their own but gain significance when strung together as text, the fragments within a painting link together to acquire new rhythms and meanings. In the exhibition space, the process of play continues—not only within each painting but also in how the works relate to one another. Placing paintings within the space of Satoko Oe Contemporary, the venue for this exhibition, will create a different kind of landscape than what emerges in my studio, and I am excited to see what kind of text I, too, can reweave as a viewer. I hope each person will freely compose their own text—drawing on their own viewing rhythm—within the limited contexts of the paintings and the exhibition space.”

Shinichiro KANO

2025.3.25 – 4.26
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday

Ryoko Kumakura (b. 1991) and Naoya Hirata (b. 1991) work in different media—painting and sculpture, respectively—but both incorporate digital technology into their creative processes. Kumakura gathers images, words, historical facts, and fictional elements based on themes she sets for herself, then forcibly juxtaposes and arranges them on a computer according to her intent. Based on this digital collage, she creates actual motifs and proceeds to produce her paintings.

平田は、熊倉と同様に主にアッサンブラージュ（寄せ集め）の手法でPCの仮想空間に構築した彫刻作品を、現実世界に投影し発表しています。投影の方法は多岐に渡り、映像、ゲーム、レンチキュラー、3Dプリンター等を用いて出力・展示されますが、ときにHMDを装着するVR作品もあり、物理空間に仮想空間の彫刻作品を召喚する上記の方法とは逆に、「仮想の身体」を通して作品と対峙させることによって、人新世における新たな存在との向き合い方を模索しています。

いずれのアーティストも、それぞれがパソコンの画面上、または仮想空間内の解像度と、現実世界での解像度の差異について懐疑的、もしくはそこがまさに魅力的だと考えているかのようで、次元の間を行きつ戻りつしながら、まるで解像度の違う眼鏡を都度掛け直しながら制作しているかのようです。

「世界観」という曖昧な単語の使用は控えたいと思いますが、それぞれが目視しているパラレルワールドのような状況（環境）を、一方は絵画に、他方は彫刻に、写し取ろうとする姿は非常に興味深く、現実の場所（物理空間）でそれらを同居させてみたらどのように見えるのか、と思い本展を企画するに至りました。

ぜひお運びいただけましたら幸いです。

2024.12.017 – 2025.01.25
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday
Closed from 12.29 – 01.13

2024.08.03 – 09.14
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday

Shigeru Hasegawa (b.1963) is a graduate of the Aichi University of the Arts with a specialty in oil painting. After graduating in 1988, he went on to study abroad in Germany and the Netherlands at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and De Ateliers of Amsterdam, respectively. Hasegawa then pivoted his practice from Europe to his home country, where he has since held numerous solo exhibitions. His work utilizes large canvases featuring jars, ginger, raw meat, and toy poodles, among other things, often drawing on items used in everyday life.

Using both concrete and abstract styles, Hasegawa belongs to the “New Figurative Painting” genre, which emerged in the 1990s. In addition to his art practice, he works with T&S Gallery (Tokyo, Meguro) to organize exhibitions for young and emerging artists.

From 2003-2004, he returned to Amsterdam, where he found inspiration in paintings from the Medieval paintings and Dutch domestic interior scenes, using relaxed, loose brushstrokes to compose his works. Starting in the 2000s, Hasegawa also developed a style that combines discrete, seemingly unrelated motifs together to form novel images.

After taking a break from publicly showing paintings in 2011, Hasegawa contributed works to the exhibition “HUMOR and LEAP of Thought” (Okazaki City Museum) in 2013, and has continued to create work in private. In 2019, a solo exhibition at Satoko Oe Contemporary (Tokyo) entitled “PAINTING” showcased his ever-evolving style, which, through its changes, continues to explore the essence of painting.

This exhibition combined old and previously undisplayed pieces, including a series depicting salmon.

From August 3, 2024 to November 10, 2024, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo will hold a solo exhibition of Hasegawa’s work titled “MOT Collection – Eye to Eye.”

2024.05.28 – 06.22
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday

The collage drawings created as instructions for the social practice “Ending the War on the Other Side of the World” (2023-), which is currently in production, are drawn on waterproof blue sheets.

The text explaining the content of the work, and the face of Emperor Hirohito and the former Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, who committed suicide by poisoning potassium cyanide, are largely drawn. Nearly 80 years have passed since the end of the world war II, and the number of generations that experienced war has decreased, and the form of society has changed significantly.

It has changed to welcome workers and students from Asian regions once invaded by the Japanese military. This artwork attempts to think about what war is like in the context of global change by recreating Emperor Hirohito’s Gyokuon broadcast by this visitor from Asia.

Yoshinori Niwa plans to complete this work within the next few years. This exhibition will feature new and recent drawings created in Vienna, centering around this collage drawing, as well as a video work titled “Selling the naming rights to a garbage mountain” in 2014 set in a garbage landfill in Manila, Philippines.

We are pleased to announce the group show of “ONSEN CONFIDENTIAL The Final!!” starting from 6th through 20th April.

2024.01.27 – 02.24
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday

2023.11.21 – 12.16
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday

2023.07.22 – 09.02
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday, between 08.12 – 21

Scarecrow

Almost half a century ago, maybe when I was in junior high school (my memory is hazy), I watched a movie starring Al Pacino and Gene Hackman. It was a dismal tale of a couple of scruffy vagabonds drifting around rural America, and the title, Scarecrow, somehow stuck in my mind. The English word meant nothing to me at the time, and perhaps I was simply drawn to the sound. The film portrayed the misery and rage of outcasts, men who society scorned as hoodlums or drunken bums, and it conveyed the atmosphere of present-day America, which seemed extremely remote and exciting to a Japanese kid from the sticks. At that time many movies coming out of the West revolved around outlaw stories like this, and I think they may have had a profound impact on my adolescent mentality.

It was not until much later that I learned the meaning of “scarecrow,” which is kakashi in Japanese. After that, when I was in art school, I saw The Wizard of Oz, and the brainless scarecrow character made a lasting impression on me. I’m not sure why this was, but it may have resonated with some void or absence I perceived within myself. I may have unconsciously projected myself onto that straw man. I think it was around that time that I finally made the connection between kakashi and “scarecrow.”

Be that as it may, when used in a metaphorical sense the implications of the word are rarely positive. We picture a lonely outcast standing around idly, someone useless and incompetent despite having a designated duty to fulfill.

In Japan at least, actual scarecrows in fields are often mishmashes of junk and old worn-out clothing, made without craft or attention to detail and barely registering as humanoid figures. At the same time, a vaguely humanoid form is really their only defining feature. For the past ten years or so, I’ve been strangely fascinated by these hollow and senseless entities.

Two years ago, I had a solo show and took the title of one of the works from Millet’s painting The Sower. It was just a title without any deep meaning, and it didn’t signify the things that motivated Millet, like devout faith or empathy with farmers. I depicted a purposeless humanoid figure made by piling up or binding together vegetables, fish, sticks and stones. A being without a brain, a heart, or a narrative. In a way it was like a scarecrow. The cobbled-together figure in the painting had outstretched hands, in a pose reminiscent of a sower.

The sower and the scarecrow… it fit together nicely.

What we in Japan describe as art or painting, including the modern and contemporary variety, to this day is mostly nothing more than a patchwork of imitations of the West, a hollow and superficial sham. It’s a constant effort to conform to overseas values, to create works that feel safe and familiar to both the artist and the viewer, who are in a relationship of cozy complicity.

These things look the part, but they lack substance. For as long as anyone can remember, they’ve been like stuffed scarecrows with no real substance. Maybe this is why I feel drawn to scarecrows.

At the edge of the field where the seeds of Western art were sown, there stands an empty and worthless scarecrow, patched together from cast-off scraps… this is the scene I picture in my mind’s eye.

Shigeru HASEGAWA

2023.04.15 – 05.20
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday
*We will be closed between 04.29 – 05.08.
In this exhibition, Why does humankind engage in economic activity?, the artist Yoshinori Niwa presents videos, drawings, and neon works. These works shed light on how the human identity is shaped by capitalist society, which is premised on mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal, and its products.

As Niwa was active in performance art for many years, the titles of his works hold special significance for him. In the past, nearly all of the titles ended in “-ing.” Niwa’s videos, which document his performances, are just one more example. In essence, they are presented as a public protocol that can be used by anyone.

In the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Niwa expanded his performance works by embarking on a new series of collages in which he combined supermarket fliers that were deposited in his mailbox everyday with pictures from newspapers and masking tape. Alongside images of meat, sausages, clothing, and mass-produced industrial goods, a variety of actions (i.e., titles) are specified in large Japanese and German writing, as a critique of capitalist society, against a backdrop of innocently smiling models. Niwa made the majority of these works at his studio in Vienna.

In recent years, Niwa staged the Narrating our possessions, 2022 performance, in which he randomly read legible words over the telephone in a public space in London as he crawled through the street toward the gallery. He was also invited by the Prameya Art Foundation to place an ad in a Dehli newspaper, and in a citizen-participation project called Living in someone’s possessions, 2023, he temporarily borrowed various things from ordinary people and attempted to imitate their daily lives. All of these works raise questions about the human race, which finds itself at the mercy of capitalist society with its concomitant mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal. Although we all share a hatred for capitalism, it is impossible to refrain from taking part in economic activities. It is within this sad state of affairs that our identities seep out.

Supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum Tokyo