Yutaka Kikutake Gallery » Artists

BIO

ykg — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 07:13:31 +0000

Nanami Saito was born in Osaka in 1996, and currently lives and works in Tokyo. Employing techniques such as entwining wire netting used for pest control around clay before firing, Saito produces ceramic works that explore the interplay between “nature/manmade objects/her own body,” examining their distances and relationships. Saito’s artistic practice is inspired by extensive fieldwork both in Japan and overseas, focusing on rituals, beliefs, and sacred sites, and covers a wide range of locations, including Mount Osore in Aomori Prefecture, Yakushima in Kagoshima Prefecture, the stone circles of the British Isles, and the religious rituals of Bali. In recent years, she has taken up the new theme of “corporeality,” expanding her practice into a series of works that use her own body parts as motifs. Her major exhibitions include MA (kokyu kyoto, 2022), Whispers in the Wholeness (Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, 2024), PNEUMA (Kuma Gallery, Tokyo, 2023).

EXHIBITIONS

ykg — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 06:33:00 +0000

NEWS

ykg — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 02:35:21 +0000

EXHIBITIONS

ykg — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 04:29:14 +0000

BIO

ykg — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 08:51:24 +0000

Yuka Mori (b.1991) was raised in Shiga prefecture and is currently based in Kyoto. Using Japanese-style painting mineral pigments and surfaces, Mori creates work focused on two primary subjects: people and plants. With a strong interest in the body and a contemplative approach to the boundary between humans and the natural environment, Mori’s work conjures a visceral continuum of fusion between people and other people, people and plants, or plants and other plants. Other works attempt to depict the circulation between inside and outside as mediated through windows and based on the idea of a building as a living organism. Mori’s practice also includes a series of life drawings of plants, and a series entitled Mesh that features organic yet chaotic net-like botanical forms.

In recent years, Mori’s major exhibitions include Mist and Dew* (Yutaka Kikutake Gallery Kyobashi, 2026), Ghost-like Hover* (ATLA, Los Angeles, 2025), Intertwined—Playful Mesh* (Gallery crossing, Gifu, 2025), Materiality in Progress: Exploring New Materialism in Contemporary Art (Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami, 2025), Yuka Mori - Teppei Yamada “Liminal Acts” (LOKO gallery, Tokyo, 2024), Forest Festival of the Arts Okayama (Okayama, 2024), Yuka Mori Exhibition* (toutou gallery, Okayama, 2023), Portrait in the Rain* (Dohjidai Gallery, Kyoto, 2021), The New Kyoto Nihonga Exhibition 2020 (Museum -EKi- KYOTO and Hotel Granvia Kyoto, 2020), and Spreading Vein* (Gallery SUJIN, Kyoto, 2019). Mori studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris as an exchange student in 2015, and was a 2022 artist in residence at art biotope Nasu. She is the recipient of the 2024 Pommery Prize Kyoto Grand Prize.

*solo exhibition

ARTIST WEBSITE

EXHIBITIONS

ykg — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 08:50:25 +0000

NEWS

ykg — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 07:52:29 +0000

PRESS

ykg — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 06:41:05 +0000

BIO

ykg — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 07:22:55 +0000

Hiraku Suzuki (b. 1978 in Miyagi, Japan) currently lives and works in Tokyo. Suzuki considers “drawing” to be something that exists between images and language, and explores the new potential that this definition implies through an artistic practice that encompasses two-dimensional works, sculptures, installations, murals, videos, and performances that often utilize light-reflective media. This intermedia approach is informed by excavating fragments of glyphs and signs from our ever-changing environment, and rearranging them to generate tube-like circuitry in space and time—a method he describes as “alternative archaeology”. By archiving and reworking various forms and lines emerging from cave murals, music notations, urban traffic, plants, minerals, and cosmic phenomena, Suzuki attempts to reinterpret “drawing” from a cosmic perspective and expand its conceptual boundaries.

Suzuki’s major solo exhibitions include "Excavation Today" at The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (2023). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions in Japan and abroad, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2019, 2022, 2024), MO.CO. Panacée, France (2019), the Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan, China (2016), the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2009, 2012, 2018, 2025), and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2010). His works are held in collections including the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, agnès b. collection (France), and University of the Arts London (UK).

Since 2016, he has served as the head organizer for the international drawing research platform Drawing Tube. He has also collaborated with artists from other fields, such as musicians and poets, and has created numerous public artworks. His publications include SILVER MARKER—Drawing as Excavating (HeHe, 2020) and Drawing—Point, Line and Plane to Tube (Sayusha, 2023).

Suzuki received his MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2008. In 2011, he completed a residency at Chelsea College of Arts in London. From 2011 to 2012, he lived and worked in the United States with support from the Asian Cultural Council, and from 2012 to 2013 in Germany with a grant from the Pola Art Foundation. In 2023, he was awarded the Japanese Government Overseas Research Program Grant from the Agency for Cultural Affairs and undertook research in France. He received the Grand Prize of the FID Prize International Drawing Contest in 2017 and the 35th Takashimaya Art Award in 2025.

BIO

ykg — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:48:35 +0000

Mari Katayama (b.1987, Saitama) conceives of her own body as a living sculpture, producing an eclectic oeuvre that encompasses self-portraits and other photographic works, intricately crafted handsewn objects, and video installations. While bearing autobiographical elements that reflect the artist herself at various moments in her life, her works are also deeply imbued with a strong volition towards a universality that is grounded in the artist’s own experiences and thought processes, and have garnered empathy across various different fields, transcending the boundaries of art. Through the “High Heel Project,” a long-term artistic and activist initiative launched in 2011 advocating the “freedom of choice for all,” she has continued to actively update society’s existing frameworks, making it stand as a valuable example demonstrating, in a highly concrete manner, the potential for artistic practice through works to connect with society.

Her major solo exhibitions include, “Mari Katayama -Display at Tate Modern, Performer and Participant” (Tate Modern, London, 2023), “Mine and Yours” (Foto Arsenal Wien, 2023), and “home again” (Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, 2021), with selected group exhibitions such as “Women in Photography” (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2025), “QUELLE JOIE DE VOUS VOIR” (Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2024), “Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest” (South London Gallery, 2025), “LOVE: Still Not the Lesser” (Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 2023), “58th Venice Biennale: May You Live in Interesting Times” (Arsenale, Giardini, Venice, 2019), “Contemporary Japanese Photography vol. 14: Photographs of Innocence and of Experience” (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2017), “Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice: (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2016). Her works are included in the collections of Tate Modern (London), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Fondation Antoine de Galbert (Paris), National Museum of Art, Osaka, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, and Mori Art Museum. In 2015, six works from her tree of life series, commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum, was newly acquired and added to the museum’s collection.

ARTIST WEBSITE