Ambient, Envirionment, Circumstances -The Topography of Contemporary Art-

2 Uncovered Cube #146, 3 Ambivalence #03

MADARA MANJI

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

In the first room of the movable exhibition space, you will find works No. 2 and No. 3 by MADARA MANJI.

About 400 years ago, the tsuba—the hand guard of a samurai sword—served not only as a protective element but also as a surface for ornamental expression reflecting the owner’s aesthetic.

Among these traditions, the mokume-gane technique, which mimics wood grain in metal, was developed. After the Meiji Restoration and the sword ban, its purpose was lost and the technique fell into decline.

MADARA MANJI has mastered the three core techniques of metalwork—chasing, forging, and alloying—and succeeded in reviving mokume-gane.

Works No. 2 and 3 combine this lost method with concrete and cubic forms to create striking visual experiences.

Each piece condenses the time spent striking a 3-kilogram hammer about 100,000 times.

4-9 Untitled (Non-homogeneous arrangement)

Sou Suzuki

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

In the second room are paintings by Daichi Kukita and works No. 4 to 9 by Misao Suzuki using vacuum storage bags.

What steps do you take when you send an item to someone?

This series visualizes the journey of plastics that Suzuki collected in his daily life in Yokohama—from collection to museum display.

The plastics are wrapped in velvet, sealed in vacuum bags, packed into cardboard, and passed to a shipping company.

“Fragile” stickers are added, and the boxes arrive at the museum.

There, the bags are removed and placed atop the boxes.

Suzuki sees sculpture as “a history of human activity transformed into objects.”

Take a close look at the material list—you might notice something curious: a whoopee cushion. Where might it be?

10, 11 The One Who Perceives the Sounds of the World

Soe Yu Nwe

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

A silver pedestal evokes a water surface, reflecting Kannon, Nüwa, and lotus flowers.

This room belongs to Soe Yu Nwe from Myanmar.

Since 1962, Myanmar has experienced long military rule, including the current regime after the 2021 coup. The military rulers are also devout Buddhists—holding devotion and authoritarianism in parallel.

Work No. 10 refers to a real event where a military officer, seduced in a dream by a female statue, woke the next morning and immediately bound the statue in chains.

In Work No. 11, Soe Yu Nwe, who has studied East Asian Buddhism extensively, explores the gender identity of Kannon: female in Thailand and Myanmar, but sometimes male in Japan.

She visualizes the transition between identities through a new interpretation of Kannon.

17-20 Untitled(Deorganic Indication)

Sou Suzuki

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

In the fourth room, you’ll find Daichi Kukita’s semi-relief painting installation, and Works No. 17 to 20 by Misao Suzuki, made using balloons.

While Suzuki views sculpture as “human activity transformed into objects,” he also questions the role of an individual in history.

This series follows the vacuum bag works, moving from “removing air” to “adding air.”

While picking up trash in Yokohama, he realized that Japan—despite not producing oil— has abundant plastic waste, yet contains no domestically sourced lime.

He began filling silk cotton with lime-based plaster to make toys you can inflate. Visitors can blow up balloons and enjoy whether they burst or not.

The remains of burst balloons are scattered around the toys.

21-24 A portrait with the eye that stare into void and others

Kim Riyoo

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

As a door opens, you hear a sound—eyes look your way.

This is the room of Kim Riyu, with works No. 21 to 24.

Born to a Japanese father and Korean mother, Kim explores Japan’s roots in Jomon culture and its imagined future through anime.

What connects them? Kim uses traditional pottery techniques—kneading clay and firing it—echoing the Jomon era. His ceramics feature Jomon-like patterns.

After watching Evangelion at 14, he became fascinated with sci-fi and the aesthetics of circuit boards.

He began creating works that merge the ancient and futuristic: Jomon pottery and printed circuit motifs, both emerging from the universal practice of pottery.

25 My Shadow on Your Dust

Zheng Tianyi

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

Work No. 25 continues across three rooms.

Zheng Tianyi, a creator of poetic spaces and a university researcher in Hong Kong and the Netherlands, explored Hiroshima’s antiques.

Starting with location scouting for the short film that you can watch in the first room, she ventured into the underground spaces and local recycling shops of Motomachi.

Among these places, she felt a particularly strong connection to the warehouse of a recycling shop run by a Chinese owner.

The shopkeeper, her compatriot, is already elderly and has made a living buying and selling secondhand goods in Hiroshima for half a century.

The space, filled with the essence of one person’s life, is so dilapidated that it has become famous among ruin enthusiasts.

Zheng Tianyi and engineer Ed salvaged some electrical appliances from the site and reimagined them giving the machines a spark of life again.

26 Torno・Tortus (Tour to Turn)

Kaori Endo

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

In the far right of the large exhibition room is Work No. 26 by Kaori Endo.

She constructs immersive spaces from glass cases, bamboo, ceramics, and photographs.

This project traces her journey from Ōtake to Seoul, mirroring a clockwise motion like a potter’s wheel.

She gathered clay in Miyajima for Osunayaki pottery, rooted in ritual: travelers carry shrine sand and return with local earth, turning it into a vessel.

Her journey passed through Shikoku, Kyushu, Tsushima, Busan, and finally Seoul—reversing the route of potters forcibly taken to Japan during the Imjin War.

She believes history has both spoken and unspoken layers—and her work seeks to give voice to the latter.

27 A portrait with the eye (The goddess who ate the apple) and 30 Spirituality

Kim Riyoo and Sou Suzuki

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

Works No. 27 by Kim Riyu and No. 30 by Misao Suzuki face one another.

Kim’s ceramic has a single eye; Suzuki’s sculpture has none.

Kim contemplates his dual heritage; Suzuki reflects on the shared routines of human life.

Roots and rituals belong to us all—some we notice, others we don’t.

Through ceramics and sculpture, these often-ignored aspects take form and appear before us.

Even if abstract, each work carries the artist’s life and background.

This exhibition creates a space where two very different beings can gaze at one another.

28,29 Nudihallucination

Omyo Cho

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

Works No. 28 and 29 present two sea hares.

Omyo Cho, from South Korea, writes sci-fi that blends feminist literary movements of the 2010s.

Sea hares, creatures in her novels, are crafted here in stainless steel, surgical chain, glass, silver, and resin.

In her stories, as characters face dilemmas about memory and life, they study sea hare neurons—leading to human evolution.

Yet, the resulting society—driven by empathy—becomes dystopian.

Sea hares are known in neuroscience for their role in understanding human memory.

These sculptures also explore the beauty of glass and contemporary craft.

33-39 Repetition_The Swing 01 and others

Daichi Kukita

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

Works No. 33 to 39 are by Daichi Kukita, the youngest artist here and the only painter, born in 2000.

He samples key motifs from classical art, especially Baroque masterpieces.

To many Japanese viewers, European art is admired but unfamiliar—something “good” but distant.

Contemporary art often feels the same.

Kukita selects artists like Fragonard and Redon, extracts motifs, and arranges them like stamps or semi-reliefs.

Through playful arrangement, he visualizes our emotional distance from painting.

His works are scattered like toys throughout the space—meant to be enjoyed lightly, not taken too seriously.

31, 32 Letters as a Living Culture

Muhamad Gerly

Photo Credit: Kenichi Asano

Works No. 31 and 32 include colorful masks and three pairs of white banners.

Gerly Muhamad is of Sundanese descent, an ethnic minority in Indonesia.

Her installation centers on Dewi Sri, the goddess of abundance, deeply tied to Sundanese agriculture and food.

Recently, her homeland suffered pollution of irrigation waters.

A sacred cave used for rituals was closed due to mining, damaging water quality.

To honor her cultural roots, she displays masks once used in those rituals, and white mourning cloths used in funerals.

At the opening performance, visitors contributed food-related symbols using traditional paint made by mixing local soil and pigment in the mouth.

Alongside her work with farmers, Gerly also organizes protests to protect their water.

Emile Gallé’s Garden
※Gallé’s work is not on display during this exhibition.

Emile Gallé

Emile Gallé had a powerful attraction to nature, and developed a unique form of expression that centered on plant and insect designs.

He created a vast garden at his home in Nancy, France, which housed greenhouses, wetlands, vegetable patches and orchards.

It is said to have contained close to 3,000 species of plants, including varieties indigenous to Japan.

Gallé found inspiration for his works in this treasure trove of wildlife, and also used it to learn more about the mysteries of nature.

The Emile Gallé Garden at the Simose Art Museum was designed to showcase the plants and flowers that appears in Gallé’s artworks.

Containing a pond, a pergola, and a boardwalk, it was also made to enable flora native to Hiroshima to flourish.

In spring, visitors can see Asian bleeding hearts and wallflowers bloom; in summer, East Asian yellow water lilies and other varieties of water lilies can be observed flowering on the pond; autumn crocuses reemerge to flower in autumn; in winter, daffodils color the water’s edge.

In the Emile Gallé Garden, visitors will no doubt chance upon butterflies and dragonflies; they are encouraged to enjoy nature, which exerted such a positive influence on Gallé and his works, to their hearts’ content.