2026 Highlights - Tokyo Gendai

2026
Highlights

The fourth edition of Tokyo Gendai took place from 11 to 13 September 2026 (VIP Preview and Vernissage on 10 September) at PACIFICO Yokohama. Bringing together 69 galleries from across the world, the fair captured the diversity and range of Japan’s creative landscape, from artists reinterpreting centuries-old craft traditions to experimental work employing the latest digital technologies.

Alongside the fair, an extensive VIP programme offered access to some of Japan’s leading cultural institutions, while the annual Art Talks programme and Curatorial Symposium convened thought leaders from across the art world. Welcoming collectors, curators and patrons from 14 countries and regions, the fair saw robust sales and launched new collaborations rooted in Japan’s cultural scene.

We extend our sincere gratitude to everyone who visited, as well as to our participating galleries, sponsors, partners and staff, whose support made our fourth edition such a success.

Fair Overview

Exhibiting Galleries

Public Programmes

Partners

Fair Overview

Dates

Public Days
Friday 11 September 2026, 12pm – 8pm
Saturday 12 September 2026, 11am – 6pm
Sunday 13 September 2026, 11am – 5pm

Vernissage
Thursday 10 September 2026, 5pm – 8pm

Venue

PACIFICO Yokohama, Exhibition Hall C/D
1-1-1 Minato Mirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 220-0012

Exhibiting Galleries

Galleries
Presentations by leading galleries from across the world, featuring a carefully selected roster of artists.

Hana ‘Flower’
Solo and group presentations by artists at an early or mid-stage in their career, shaping the next generation.

Eda ‘Branch’
Curated solo and group presentations, ranging from artists who have left their mark on Asian art history to contemporary masters.

Tane ‘Seed’
Returning after a two-year hiatus, the sector dedicated to digital media explored the current state of digital art, from animation and film to AR and VR.

Miki ‘Trunk’
Debuting in 2026, a sector dedicated to works on paper, including photography, drawing and prints, celebrating longstanding traditions alongside new interpretations.

Galleries

Hana

Eda

Tane

Miki

Public Programmes

Tokyo Gendai’s Public Programmes complement the presentations by galleries from around the world, offering ways to explore contemporary art from a range of perspectives. This year’s line-up included the ever-popular talk series Art Talks; Sato ‘Meadow’, presenting experiential and performative installations; Ne ‘Root’, special exhibitions by leading cultural foundations; and two awards: the Hana Artist Award, presented to an artist exhibiting in the Hana ‘Flower’ sector, and the AMA Artist Award, supporting emerging artists from North America.

Sato 'Meadow'

This year, Sato ‘Meadow’ featured a total of 14 dynamic, site-specific installations and performances presented by participating galleries, activating the fair space beyond the booth presentations.

Takeshi Yasura (KOTARO NUKAGA)

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.

Mr. (Kaikai Kiki Gallery)

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.

Marina Abramović (TAEX)

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.

Qin Feng (Art of Nature Contemporary)

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.

Syozo Taniguchi (HARUKAITO by ISLAND)

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

Dzidefo Amegasty (space Un)

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.

Kiyoshi Izumi, Nobukazu Takemura, Atsushi Nishijima, and Keitetsu Murai (MtK Contemporary Art)

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.

Shohei Takasaki Featuring Improvised Percussion by Seiya Kudo (Gallery Common)

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.

Saruchudu Yiru (Marco Gallery)

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.

Soh Souen (AWASE gallery)

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.

Lawrence Weiner (TARO NASU)

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.

Ryuichi Ohira (NANZUKA)

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

A time signal sounds at irregular intervals.

Tanabe Chikuunsai Ⅳ (YUMEKOUBOU GALLERY)

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.

SCREENING

Screening presented works by emerging and established artists alike, exploring new possibilities for contemporary art and the moving image.

NANZUKA
Keiichi Tanaami, Red Shade, 6’44” (2021)

TAEX
Marina Abramović, Feeling Energy #3, 0’34” (2026)

Chi-Wen
Yu Cheng-Ta, adj. Dance (2010), 5’11” (2010)

Double Square Gallery
ZHANG XU Zhan, Zhang Xu Zhan’s Stomach’ Hsin Hsin Joss Paper Store Series – Room 001, 5’00” (2013–2014)

Project Fulfill Art Space
Su Hui-Yu, Future Shock, 20’00” (2019)

Takuro Someya Contemporary Art
Masaru Iwai, Galaxy Wash, 14’34”, 2008
Masaru Iwai, The White Building Washing, 11’50”, 2012
Mai Yamashita + Naoto Kobayashi, Infinity, 4’38”, 2006
Mai Yamashita + Naoto Kobayashi, Unfortunately, impossible, 9’18”, 2007
Mai Yamashita + Naoto Kobayashi, Cairn, 4’38”, 2018

Tokyo Gendai’s annual talks programme, Art Talks, returned for the 2026 edition, gathering thought leaders from across the industry to discuss the currents and trends shaping today’s art landscape. Across eight panel sessions spanning art, architecture and fashion, speakers shared their insights and expertise in compelling, timely conversations, offering fairgoers the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the most pressing themes in contemporary art.

Art Talks

Session 1: Building an International Practice

Lauren Quin (Artist)

Kimberli Gant (Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum)

Maya Nago (Editor-in-Chief, ARTnews JAPAN)

Session 2: Curating the Next Yokohama Triennale

Mika Kuraya (Executive Director, Organising Committee for Yokohama Triennale; Director, Yokohama Museum of Art)

Cosmin Costinaş (Curator and writer; Co-Artistic Director, 9th Yokohama Triennale)

Session 3: Moving Images in Contemporary Art

Chi-Wen Huang (Founder and Director, Chi-Wen Gallery)

Yu Cheng-Ta (Artist)

Daisuke Miyatsu (Art collector; Professor, Yokohama University of Art and Design)

Session 4: Architecture as Exhibition

Jun Aoki (Architect)

Yoko Nose (Senior Curator, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery)

Session 5: The Value of Art: Collector & Artist Perspectives

Emi Kusano (Artist)

Koji Nakao (CEO, Art Management Shimanami LLC)

Sawako Hidaka (Executive Director, Asia Society Japan Center)

Session 6: The Next Generation of Galleries

Kohei Yamada (Artist; Director, AWASE gallery)

Toshimitsu Komoda (Director, Marco Gallery)

Hisatomo Kato (Director, CON_)

Eri Takane (Fair Director, Tokyo Gendai)

Session 7: Art Meets Fashion / The Future of Creativity

Yusuke Takahashi (Founder, Creative Director and CEO, CFCL)

Akiko Miki (Director, Naoshima New Museum of Art; International Artistic Director, Benesse Art Site Naoshima; Artistic Director, TOKYO ATLAS)

Sachiko Tonooka (Editor-in-Chief, 25ans)

Session 8: The Future of Regional International Art Festivals

Takeo Obayashi (Chairman of the Board, Obayashi Corporation)

Hitoshi Tanaka (Founder and Group CEO, JINS HOLDINGS Inc.)

Aki Hoashi (Deputy Executive Director, Organising Committee for Yokohama Triennale; Manager, International and Curatorial Departments, Yokohama Museum of Art)

Hana Artist Award

The Hana Artist Award was presented to Soh Souen (AWASE gallery), who exhibited in the fair’s Hana ‘Flower’ sector. Alongside special recognition during the fair, the artist received a prize of JPY 1,000,000.

Based in Fukuoka, Soh Souen explores the essence of humanity through phenomena intimately tied to our lives, such as ‘breath’, ‘the navel’ and ‘eggs’, presenting work in Japan and internationally across installation, performance and workshops. Pain things, shown on the AWASE gallery stand, comprises panel works and a video work. In the panel works, the artist stippled bleach onto black-dyed fabric, drawing out their own silhouette as the colour was lifted away; through this act, the work questions the identities that shape the individual and the boundaries that define them. The video work takes ‘breath’ as its motif, reconsidering the boundaries that separate one person from another and our relationship with a divided world.

The jury comprised Elisa Carollo, curator and art writer for the Observer; Hirokazu Tokuyama, Senior Curator at Mori Art Museum; and collector Monique Leong. The jurors were deeply moved by the rare boldness, sensitivity and maturity of the work for an artist so young, and commended a distinctive practice that articulates the nature of the body, the self and intimacy through diverse forms of expression, from performance to video and painting.

The Hana Artist Award was made possible with the support of ArtSticker, Official Supporting Partner of Tokyo Gendai.

Ne 'Root'

Ne ‘Root’ presented special exhibitions by three leading foundations integral to Japan’s art scene: Kiyoharu Art Colony (Yoshii Foundation), Odawara Art Foundation and the Contemporary Art Dealers Association Nippon (CADAN).

AMA Artist Award

The AMA Artist Award, an initiative from Angus Montgomery Arts (AMA), organiser of Tokyo Gendai and art fairs around the world, supports early to mid-career North American artists. The recipient receives a prize package valued at USD 100,000, covering the presentation of curated showcases of their work at India Art Fair and Tokyo Gendai, two of Asia’s most influential contemporary art fairs, and including a cash prize of USD 10,000.

The 2026 recipient is Umar Rashid, born in Chicago in 1976. For more than two decades, Rashid has interwoven real and imagined histories to examine how narratives of colonial power, identity and influence are constructed. Drawing on a wide range of cultural sources, including African cosmologies, Native American ledger art, hip-hop, classical and Egyptian mythology and Afrofuturism, he weaves lyrical storytelling and sharp humour into his work.

At Tokyo Gendai, he presented new works created especially for the fair: There are other worlds than these, a series of 40 works. Borrowing the narrative devices of pulp fiction and comics, the series depicts the colonial logic of ‘might makes right’ and the consequences of the forced fusion of cultures.

Partners

At Tokyo Gendai, partnerships were established with 37 companies and organisations, spanning financial institutions, hospitality, media, and cultural institutions. A wide array of activations were developed for a broad audience, including general visitors as well as partners’ clients and stakeholders.

For 2027 and beyond, we welcome collaboration with companies and organisations seeking unique, meaningful partnerships with high affinity for contemporary art. Through collaboration with diverse brands and organisations, we offer opportunities to reach various audiences — including curators, collectors, high-net-worth individuals, and trend-conscious Gen Z — generating far-reaching impact.

Official Partners

Principal Partner

SMBC Group, a financial conglomerate with a wide range of business including banking, securities, and trust services, will contribute to the growth of the Japanese art market and the dissemination of Japan’s soft power as a member of the art ecosystem, together with our customers who are interested in art.

Official Premium Partner