Garden (2026)
Sludge incineration ash (Kohoku area, Kanagawa), 24K pure gold leaf, fertiliser containing recycled phosphorus recovered from sewage sludge, plastic bags

Takeshi Yasura’s practice regards humans, flora and fauna, inanimate matter and technology not as a vertical hierarchy but as a horizontal network, taking as its subject the dynamics of matter as it circulates and transforms between them.
Garden comprises stacked bags of fertiliser blended with recycled phosphorus generated in the sludge treatment process, topped with objects formed from sludge incineration ash. These are materials that have passed through the human body, travelled from the sewers to treatment plants and been recovered through incineration and regeneration; much of this matter goes on to support our everyday surroundings, largely unseen, as aggregate and other civil engineering materials. The garden offered by the title lies before any division between the natural and the artificial: a place where human and non-human, life and non-life are continuous, and where the metabolism of the city itself comes into view.

That Day’s Never-Ending “Let’s Spend the Night Together”—Off the Chart (2026)
First-generation MZ11 Soarer, Honda Tact Courrèges AF09, Kawasaki Z400FX

A boldly customised Toyota Soarer in the style of a ‘Yankee itasha’, which drew wide attention at Mr.’s solo exhibition this spring: his first in Japan in 11 years, and his first ever at a Japanese museum.

Slow Walking (2026)
Avatar Performance

Slow Walking is a monumental LED wall installation and limited-edition digital artwork by Marina Abramović. First unveiled as part of the landmark exhibition Transforming Energy at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice during the 61st Venice Biennale, it formed part of a sweeping 30-metre immersive presentation. Presented by TAEX at stand T02, it offered audiences the opportunity to experience the heightened awareness and transformative potential of digital performance.

Between Unfolding (2016)
Ink on Xuan paper

Art of Nature Contemporary presented an exhibition in collaboration with Qin Feng, a leading figure of China’s avant-garde ink movement.
In traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, viewing begins as a hanging scroll is unrolled, with time and space gradually entering one’s perception. Qin Feng extends this Eastern tradition of viewing into a contemporary spatial language: scrolls hang vertically, fans open outwards, and ink flows ceaselessly between them.
Together, these elements form a work without boundaries, transforming calligraphy into an immersive spatial experience. Through this installation, viewing shifts from the act of simply looking to a physical encounter with ink as it unfolds, drawing the viewer into an immersive experience that spans Eastern philosophy, bodily perception and the public realm.

SONG OF RUSTED DAYS (2026)
Mixed media

Syozo Taniguchi is a painter who has attracted growing attention in recent years. This work extends into three dimensions a practice that has long touched viewers’ memories and emotions through motifs such as horses carrying houses on their backs. Reconstructed around a car-like structure, it is presented as a presence imbued with a sense of narrative.

Production support: TIMBER COURT + Hiroyuki Shimoyama

BRIEF (2026)
Mixed media

This work draws inspiration from the advertising that saturates our everyday surroundings, in particular the ‘advertising umbrella’. Through the repeated presence of umbrellas that serve both as rain gear and as advertising media, it considers how advertising captures our gaze and shapes consumer consciousness. In place of corporate logos, the umbrella panels bear collages of goat and cattle carcasses, making visible the realities obscured behind consumer society. The work questions the relationship between consumption, commodification and decaying life.

Four (2020–2026)
Mixed media

MtK Contemporary Art presented a group exhibition by Kiyoshi Izumi, Nobukazu Takemura, Atsushi Nishijima and Keitetsu Murai. Transforming invisible phenomena such as wind, light, plants and environmental change into something perceptible, the exhibition revisited the reciprocal relationship between ourselves and the unseen world. Developed from FOUR, an exhibition held in Osaka in 2020, it marked the project’s first presentation in Tokyo.

Untitled (September 10 2026) (2026)
Acrylic, mixed media on tarpaulin

The making of a work should not simply be the act of giving form to an inner image, but an event in which consciousness and the unconscious, self and other, control and chance intersect. The moment an artist looks back at a work and attempts to gauge its balance, they stand before it not only as its maker but also as a viewer and a critic. That act of ‘looking’ objectifies the work, yet at the same time risks halting the pure momentum of creation. This performance focuses on the process by which memories and intuitions stored in the body are continuously generated over time. To sustain that momentum, constraints rather than freedom are introduced: a vast support, limited time, a restricted set of materials and the gaze of others. These become devices that narrow the room for judgement and correction, opening the body to movement that precedes consciousness; with the further intervention of improvised music, sound and body, movement and space act upon one another and are transformed. The work emerges no longer as an expression of individual will, but as a singular event in which multiple bodies, senses and temporalities intersect. The question posed here is whether automatism can be reduced to an individual’s interior. Perhaps a work should exist not as the mere possession of its author, but as the very site of becoming.

Echoes of Life (2026)
Camphor wood, Japanese natural stone, Mongolian natural stone, acrylic

Echoes of Life is an installation centred on a sculpture approximately 2.6 metres tall, composed of a horse, a human and an owl, with herds of horses and wolves arranged around it in a circle.

For me, horses and wolves are not merely animals, but beings that connect humans and nature, the visible and the invisible, this world and the next. The owl standing atop the human head symbolises wisdom and spirituality, casting its gaze towards the unseen world. As different beings overlap within a single body, their boundaries blur, giving rise to an ‘in-between’ space in which they resonate with one another.

The horses and wolves circling around it symbolise the cycles of life, memory, time and the energy of nature. By walking within and around the circle, viewers do not simply look at the work, but experience the space as part of that cycle.

I regard wood not merely as a material, but as something that carries the traces of life. The organic texture and weight of the wood, and the natural stones from Japan and Mongolia embedded within it, symbolise life resonating across different lands and cultures.

The Egg (2022)
Performance

Performed under a single rule, to hold raw eggs, a symbol of life, in the hollows of the body and to move without dropping them, The Egg explores the delicate relationship between self and other through the ‘egg’, collectively seeking ways of being in the body that protect what is precious. The artist has previously staged the performance with a range of collaborators, including dancer María Karen Vilchis in Mexico and Sara Milio at Fukuoka Art Museum.

BATTERED UNTIL FORMED (2001)
Language + adhesive vinyl

Presented alongside a red arrow, the phrase BATTERED UNTIL FORMED is a text work by Lawrence Weiner, the American artist who, as a pioneer of Conceptual art from the 1960s onwards, remained at the forefront of contemporary art throughout his career.

‘Battered’ means beaten, broken or worn beyond recognition, which at first glance seems at odds with ‘until formed’, the process of taking shape. Weiner’s question, what form might emerge after being broken and beaten down, may be read as an allusion to today’s turbulent world and to the hope that ought to lie beyond it. Until his death in 2021, Weiner maintained a vivid interest in society and the people living within it, and consistently held an affirmative view of human existence. This work aptly conveys his distinctive sensibility, in which social critique and poetry are sublimated into humanism.

By combining words, Weiner made manifest, as colour and form before the viewer’s eyes, the relationship between the logic underpinning various ‘worldviews’ and the ethics and cultures behind that logic, encouraging viewers to engage anew with the world around them. Describing his works as ‘information’, Weiner sought to carry the viewer’s gaze further and deeper. For him, typography was a simple yet richly generative means of expression, inviting multiple interpretations and leaps of imagination.

The Time Signal (2026)
Tam-tam, chair, desk, pineapple

A time signal sounds at irregular intervals.

Circulation (2023)
Tiger bamboo

Wind, fire, earth and water: all the energies generated by the natural world are connected and circulate. We exist within a great vortex of energy, and we ourselves are part of it. This work expresses the cyclical connection between the four elements that make up the universe.