Shibunkaku Ginza
Feb 6 − 27, 2026

About a year ago, I expressed the desire to put on an exhibition at Shibunkaku Ginza. Without really knowing what kind of show it would be, it nevertheless all came together in an effortless and intuitive way. In painting too, the most beautiful moments for me are those in which I’m guided by the process; often surprised by the finished work, I feel reassured that it was always meant to be this way – and not any other way – a feeling akin to somehow remembering the future.

Thinking of this exhibition and the participating artists, my thoughts circled on the notion of silence. Unsurprisingly though, it is hard to put silence into words. I therefore struggled to formulate this text until I was shown in Kyoto a work by Yoshihara Jirō, of a girl playing cat’s cradle. The girl kindly explained to me what I had till then been trying to grasp. The encounter was one of the many surprises and reassurances which have guided me to something that I had yearned for – but how can one yearn for something that had been unknown…?

A significant part of an artist’s life is spent in silence. We often work in solitude, and the process of conversing and exploring the formless in us through the medium we work with binds it to form. These are the fruits of our efforts. In my own case, the process is one of continuous surrender of self to trust that a work will eventually arrive.

Silence is also a fitting way to describe the presence of the individual works by artists in this show.

In Christianity, Buddhism, and many other traditions, “silence” and “the word” are the dualism from which all creation springs, and with consciousness lies the possibility for this duality to be dissolved, to realise something beyond. I feel the works that have truly touched and influenced me are like lamps which are lit with the spark of primordial silence – one that comes before expression – and which points me back towards it.

In Yoshihara’s painting I saw such a lamp. The work is a beautiful representation of the essence around which I wanted to develop this exhibition. With a faint smile, the girl holds all the secrets of the cosmos. Silently she gives them form through the eternal play of yarn in her hands.

Dai-san pointed out to me that all the participating artists work with the human figure. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed this before. But of course, the silence I wanted to talk about is the one we carry in ourselves – and the wish to become a lamp.

I was introduced to Amano Yasushi by a mutual friend and was immediately drawn to his work.

Later after getting to know him, I further understood that we share similar wishes for what we create despite their taking quite different forms. Amano’s figures have a strong individuality but equally an archaic openness. They remind me of religious icons that sometimes feel for their lack of words more human than humans. They are soft and warm as if Amano was able to imbue the earth from which they are made with breath and a pulse.

Arisa Yoshioka often works from her own photographs and during the process her motifs take on new forms, whereby her source mingles with her inner workings. I feel that this process goes both ways: just as her daily life is mixed with her psyche and applied to canvas, so too is her life transformed into a wondrous adventure by her painting.

I am always excited and revitalised by the glimpses she shares with us of the world seen through her mind and her eyes.

The world that Shigeo Otake has built and inhabited for years captivates through its eerie ambivalent beauty. There is much one can write about his rich oeuvre, but I want to briefly touch on an aspect that has been especially fascinating to me. He describes the world found in many of his paintings as one in which a fungal infestation has taken hold of its human inhabitants, giving birth to a new cross-species of fungal-humans.

As a metaphor, I associate the seeds that were unknowingly inhaled by these humans, transforming their lives in the process, with the notion of culture – or in a grimmer reading, with political systems or technology that in the end are able to consume humanity itself. Seen in another light, I am also reminded of the saying by the Zen Priest Munan: “Die while you are alive, and be absolutely dead. Whatever you do then will always be good.”

In Shigeo Otake’s The Witching Hour, we see a building that no longer exists in a physical sense. It harks back to a former juvenile detention facility that Otake had seen in his youth. As bats fly ominously in the twilight above, I can’t help but feel transported to the perspective of the young girl in the scene – as curious as she is wary of what she sees. Her stillness is fraught with tension as a clear decision faces her – to flee or to enter. With all of this, I end up thinking of the shadows within ourselves that we unsuccessfully banish until we learn to face them properly and reintegrate them. And what about the strange creature lurking around the corner? I’m reminded of Albert Camus’ famous quote: “At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”

Ultimately, rather than the darker nuances of Camus’ thought, I prefer to consider the absurd as something benevolent, a messenger of a divine light.

– Ernst Yohji Jaeger

Photography: Tadayuki Minamoto