Event period: 2025 June 3 (Tue) - June 8 (Sun)
Location: Nine Gallery (Gaienmae)
This is my first solo exhibition in Tokyo this year.
This was originally supposed to be a traveling exhibition of my Kyoto solo exhibition held in April. However, most of the works that symbolized the theme "ELEMENT" were sold at the Kyoto solo exhibition, so I decided to go with a new theme. The theme of my Tokyo solo exhibition is "BORDER". Just when we thought the coronavirus had subsided, the whole world is at war. People always want to draw boundaries between religion, ideology, ethnicity, skin color, the haves and the have-nots. I longed for a world without such boundaries, so I set this theme.
I expressed a worldview that removes the boundaries that make us feel cramped: sea creatures in the sky, land creatures in the sea, the world of the living and the world of the dead. I had a lot of fun creating this free expression that deviates greatly from the realistic depictions of ecology that I have used up until now. This series is likely to become a strong central piece for me.
The main attraction of this exhibition was the natural history cards. I tweaked the images of the finished works, extracted the lines such as the borders, printed them out, and then burned, stained, and added to them to create the natural history cards. I edited the images while remembering things like, "Oh, this work was brought to me by so-and-so," or "I've had this work for a while." It was also fun to hear various comments from customers such as "I've seen this work before," or "I wanted this but couldn't get it." Since I was able to keep the price down, many people bought a few pieces, saying, "I can't buy a lot of glass works, but I can collect these." I will continue with the natural history cards from next time onwards.
This is my fifth solo exhibition at Nine Gallery . Thanks to advance notices and email newsletters, many customers came for the first time in several years. I have come this far thanks to the support of many customers. I wanted to come up with ways to attract new customers to my exhibitions, while also thinking of ways to attract people who have been away from my work and exhibitions for a while . This was my big challenge at my Tokyo solo exhibition in spring 2025.