Before long, the world outside had shifted to warm hues.

The air was cold and crisp

I looked up at the ginkgo trees from below and saw an array of yellow and blue dots

People danced amidst the light and leaves falling in the wind

A story about the world outside being inverted and becoming the inside

A cramped urn

Plants growing wildly on the streets of Ningyocho

Two persimmons I received and a diamond-leaf persimmon that I bought myself

I like gathering the seen and the unseen

Mixing them into my usual daydreams, applying them to mineral pigments

Yutaka Kikutake Gallery Kyobashi is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Yuka Mori from Saturday, January 10th to Saturday, February 21st, 2026. Borin in Shiga Prefecture in 1991 and currently based in Kyoto, Mori employs the pigments and supports of traditional Japanese painting to depict two major themes: people and plants. Her sensitivity to nature and plants cultivated by her childhood environment, combined with a deep interest in corporeality stemming from her experience in physical expression, has crystallized in the form of continuous images in which human body and human body, human body and plants, or even plants themselves merge together. For this exhibition, Mori has produced a group of eight or so new works centered around the “Mesh” series, which feature motifs collected more within the context of everyday life and explores the continuum between humans and plants, as well as the organic yet chaotic, mesh-like forms of plants.

Mori’s contemplation of the boundary between humans and nature has been visualized in her paintings as fluid motifs that can be described as both organic and visceral. The works created for this exhibition, while positioned as an extension of her previous endeavors, originate from perspectives more deeply rooted in the artist’s daily life, such as the changing seasons, plants on the streets that caught her eye, landscapes, or even conversations. The interplay between the “figure” that is depicted and the “ground” that is imagined as the background due to remaining unpainted, or the exploration of fluidity where disrupted order transforms “ground” into “figure” and vice versa, is one of the defining characteristics of the worldview she depicts. The “Mesh” series, with its striking organic forms of plants that expand across the entire painting, is an eloquent testament to her undertakings. Mori has also attempted to depict the circulation between the inside and outside of buildings through windows. For this exhibition she has created new organic forms inspired by an acquaintance’s account of experiencing a sensory reversal between the inside and outside of the body.

Images of a continuum where humans and plants merge, which have often been expressed as single entities, are undergoing a decisive shift from the individual to the collective, from motif to landscape, from tree to forest. As the artist mentions, the exhibition is designed for introspection, capitalizing on the limited lighting conditions of the Kyobashi space. Within this space, viewers themselves are prompted to consider perspectives on the boundaries between inside and outside, on circulation, and even on reversal. We invite viewers to observe these fragments of Mori’s imagination and the record of her new endeavors depicting how body and environment mutually encompass each other, both continuously undergoing fluid transformation.