Current Exhibition
Ryogoku
GALLERY MoMo is pleased to present “ARATENO”, a group exhibition featuring works by Masakazu Takatori, CHEN Shige, and Yuka Hotta, on view from Saturday, September 13 to Saturday, October 18, 2025.
The exhibition was conceived and curated by Yosuke Kobashi, an artist represented by the gallery. Beyond his own practice, Kobashi has visited and closely observed numerous exhibitions by other artists. Through conversations with him, we realized that his way of looking at artists, artworks, and exhibitions is unique and offers fresh perspectives that are often overlooked. While exhibitions curated by artists themselves have become increasingly common in recent years, ARATENO reflects Kobashi’s own words — “showing what had not been visible, a breeze that blows through stagnation” — and is structured around the shared quality of “nuke” (a sense of openness or release) that he perceives in both works and exhibitions.
In addition, the flyer design and exhibition goods, created by inori at Kobashi’s request, also capture and embody this lightness of “nuke.” Their design brings a different angle to the exhibition, introducing a distinct rhythm and sense of movement.
Freed from existing frameworks, concepts, and methods of expression, the three participating artists confront their inner selves and create continuous bodies of work through diverse approaches. We invite you to experience the exhibition space, where these works are displayed in dialogue, like an improvisational session.
ARATENO
Arateno — A Breath of Wind Blowing Through the Stagnation, Revealing What Had Been Unseen
Light flickers, eyes wander, the brain feels a pleasant thrill. Thank you.
Or perhaps, it is something entirely new—your chest tightens, it feels unbearable, the brain is in turmoil. I begin to think.
Adults are often moved by what children create.
It is “something” they once could do themselves, but no longer can.
There are adults searching for that “something” within, seeking freedom in order to remain true to themselves.
To accept contradictions within oneself, to walk without purpose, simply to walk.
It is not about returning to childhood.
To be free means to be oneself—of that time, in that moment.
And so, it is in the things created by those who are always in dialogue with themselves that we long to see something.
Yosuke Kobashi
Arateno — “Nuke” (Open Space / Breathing Room)
That sensation reaching straight into the marrow. A respect and awe so strong that one cannot help but think: thank you for taking it this far.
Chen Shige and Yuuka Hotta belong to a generation that moves freely, unbound by whether to make an installation or not, whether it’s a painting or a drawing, on the floor or the wall—never stumbling over trivial categories, but instead speaking beyond them.
Their shared quality lies in continuity and persuasive accumulation, but it is their freshness combined with a meticulous sense of balance in every detail that captivates.
Through skillful subtraction—each in a different way—they generate a sense of nuke (openness, release, a space of breathing).
Masakazu Takatori, being of my own generation, struck me differently: not with freshness, but with the persistence of addition that seems to destroy balance, and yet somehow still gives rise to nuke.
Nuke, whether deliberate or unconscious, is deeply tied to the artist’s sensibility. The more skills we acquire, the more we age, the harder it becomes to perceive.
And then there is Inori’s design, embodying nuke with equal lightness. Lightness and nuke are the common thread among the four who make up this exhibition.
As the sensibilities of the four resonate with one another—persistent, yet light—the exhibition Arateno may reach into someone’s very marrow. (With pray.)
Yosuke Kobashi
Masakazu Takatori
Due to various circumstances, I was unable to find time to focus on creating and exhibiting works for about ten years.
Recently, however, I have finally been able to make time and have resumed my practice.
Focusing on creation after such a long break, I find myself truly unable to resist the joy of painting.
This is the feeling behind these paintings.
Masakazu Takatori
Born in Okayama Prefecture in 1980.
Graduated from the Faculty of Education, Okayama University in 2002. Currently based in Okayama.
Takatori constructs dense pictorial surfaces in which vulgarity, ornamentation, and humor intermingle, employing formats such as drawing, painting, and collage. Centered around female figures, his motifs—like a notebook filled with purikura photo stickers and fashion magazine clippings—gather his favorite forms of “chaos,” to which he adds sullen expressions and cynical gazes, evoking the stories that lie behind them. Although Takatori says he had been away from artmaking for some time, his works convey an undiminished joy in the act of drawing, with no sense of the hiatus.
1980 Born in Okayama, Japan
2002 B.F.A., Bachelor of Education, Okayama University
[Solo exhibition]
2015 Kodama Gallery Kyoto, Kyoto
2011 Kodama Gallery Kyoto, Kyoto
Kodama Gallery Shirogane, Tokyo
2009 Kodama Gallery Shirogane, Tokyo
2002 DAVID HALL, Okayama
2001 Space F, Okayama
2000 DAVID HALL, Okayama
1999 DAVID HALL, Okayama
[Selected Group exhibition]
2017 "ignore your perspective 36" Kodama Gallery Shirogane, Tokyo
2012 "ignore your perspective 12" Kodama Gallery Shirogane, Tokyo
2011 "ignore your perspective 9" Kodama Gallery Shirogane, Tokyo
2010 "Resonating Art 2010: Storytelling" Kurashiki City Art Museum, Okayama
2009 "ignore your perspective 8" Kodama Gallery Kyoto, Kyoto
"ignore your perspective 7" Kodama Gallery Shirogane, Tokyo
2005 "The Vision of Contemporary Art 2005" The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo
2003 "ARTIST BY ARTIST" Mori Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo
"LOVE PLANET" Izushi Elementary School, Okayama
2002 "NEW TOWN ART TOWN" Sanyo public housing, Okayama
2001 "THE STANDARD" Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Kagawa
"The Vision of Contemporary Art 2001" The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo
2000 "Works Homestay" Haizuka Earthwork Project, Hiroshima
1999 "Yakiniku" Surooga463, Okayama
CHEN Shige
I create works with a focus on the arrangement, boundaries, and coexistence of painting, line, and linguistic description, while remaining conscious of phenomena such as discommunication, multilingual societies, the visual imagery of bargains (compression of images), and literacy in language and symbols.
Recently, I have been particularly interested in modes of depiction in pictorial expressions on paper, methods of description in multilingual manga, and the possibilities of an exophonic aesthetics.
CHEN Shige
Born in Taiwan in 1993.
Graduated from the Department of Oil Painting, Musashino Art University, completed the Master’s Program at the same university, and is currently enrolled in the Doctoral Program in Fine Arts at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts.
Chen Shige creates installations that incorporate not only painting and drawing but also manga as a means of expression, exploring themes such as the arrangement and boundaries between pictorial expression and descriptive expression. While delving into layered themes such as multilingual societies, discommunication, and multi-competence, she depicts language and “language-like things” as if they were symbols, developing pictorial surfaces where text and image intersect.
1993 Born in Taipei, Taiwan
2017 B.F.A., Painting, Musashino Art University
2021 M.F.A., Painting, Musashino Art University
2023 M.F.A., Intermedia Art, Tokyo University of the Arts,
Enrolled in a PhD in Intermedia Art from Tokyo University of the Arts.
[Solo exhibition]
2025 SPACE NOBORU, Tokyo
2023 Tokyo Arts and Space, Tokyo
APdonou, Ibaraki
2022 Geidai Shokudo, Tokyo
NADiff a/p/a/r/t, Tokyo
2021 Guardian Garden, Tokyo
[Selected Group exhibition]
2025 "The 16th Gunma Biennale For Young Artists " The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Gunma
"Pressed to Speak: Only Then the Truth Slips Out" F RINGE, Saitama
"Akita Town Station" Akita Station Building ALS, Akita
2024 "BUG School 2024 : Feeling Cities with Wild Sense" BUG, Tokyo
"Fellow Traveler" CREATIVE HUB UENO “es”, Tokyo
"ATLAS2024" Tokyo University of the Arts, Ibaraki
"Hiroshima Takehara Art Festival -The Layers of Memories" Takehara City, Hiroshima
"Manga Ken" Nito / An empty house for the arts, Tokyo
2023 "The 2nd Goat's Eye Biennale," atré Toride VIVA, Ibaraki
"2023 Tip PRIZE Exhibition - Thinking of You, Thinking of Me," Geidai Shokudo Gallery, Ibaraki
"Food and Contemporary Art/Part9Food, Art, People and the City," BankART, Kanagawa
"Welcome," @ojichan-chi, Tokyo
"Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation and Completion Exhibition" Tokyo University of the Arts Museum, Tokyo
2021 "ATLAS2021" Tokyo University of the Arts, Ibaraki
"The Eyes of a Goat: Find the Seeds of Art," atré Toride VIVA, Ibaraki
"A WORLD AFTER PANDEMIC-POSITIVE UTOPIA" Break Station Gallery, Tokyo
"Musashino Art University Graduation and Completion Exhibition" FAL, Tokyo
"Creation of Everyday Life ̶ Hands that Weave the Days," Cyg art gallery, Iwate
2020 "The easy Lifework," Gallery Cafe ULTRA, Hiroshima
"22nd‘1_WALL’Graphics Exhibition," Guardian Garden, Tokyo
2019 "Korea–Japan University Art Exchange Exhibition," Kim Jong Bok Art Museum, Daegu, Korea
"Musasabi no Abura," Shinbi gallery, Tokyo
2017 "Ishioka Satoyama Art Exhibition," Flower park, Ibaraki
"Musashino Art University Graduation and Final Project Exhibition" Musashino Art University, Tokyo
[Award]
2025 "The 16th Gunma Biennale For Young Artists" Excellence Award
2023 “Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Exhibition,” Salon de Printemps Prize
2022 Selected for “TOKAS-Emerging 2023”
2022 “The 22nd Graphic ‘1_WALL’,” Grand Prize
2017 “Musashino Art University graduate exhibition,” Painting course Award
[Artist-in-Residence]
2023 “Micro Art Workation” SENGAMACHI TANADA, Shizuoka
[Projects]
2025 "Description Society" 5th Session: Dialogue on Scientific Symbols
"Description Society" 4th Session: How to Write Bengali Numerals [সংখ্যা Sôṅkhya]
"Description Society" 3rd Session: Possibilities of Exophony in Art
"Description Society" 2nd Session: Tracing Distant Lines @ BUG
2024 "Language in the Landscape, Landscape in the Language" Kamo River Junior High School, Hiroshima
"Description Society" 1st Meeting: Chữ nôm — How to Write Numbers
"Gluten Heavy" AP Donou, Ibaraki
2023 Establishment of the Drawing + Multilingual Description Study Group “Description Society”
2021 "Let's grab the blue sky with goats" Tokyo University of the Arts, Ibaraki
[Contributed article]
2024 Arts Council Shizuoka Annual Report 2023
Yuka Hotta
I have continued to think while constantly overlapping my own body with the existence of painting—something that can reach endlessly outward, yet also remain endlessly in place.
Where do the contours that define my very self begin and end? How is it possible to hold onto and leave behind something that is in a state of perpetual flux?
For me, the act of painting is an act of assuming and confirming a form or a place for a body that has no fixed location. On limited-volume supports such as sheets of plywood, I hypothesize fragments of such a rootless body, give them shape, and leave them behind in drawn form, as if to repeatedly verify their existence. I construct the surface as though mending a body—incorporating the friction between pencil and support, the splinters and tremors it produces. At times, I deform the support itself, letting it interfere with the space, thereby mending the space in which these shifting entities between painting and body exist.
I allow myself to be pulled by the weight of my own body as I draw, by the conditions of the support and of the space. By endlessly pursuing this dynamic between painting and myself, I attempt to reconstruct ways of being for painting and the body that have long fallen outside the bounds of language.
Yuka Hotta
Born in Aichi Prefecture in 1999.
Completed the Master’s Program in Painting, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts in 2025.
Hotta presents works that project bodily sensations onto supports and spaces through painting, drawing, and installations employing transfer techniques.
In her series C, she creates vivid, life-like images that seem to drift between the visual and the tactile, generated through rhythms that overlap with breathing and spontaneous strokes.
Her practice also includes three-dimensional works that “extend” into space, whether indoors or outdoors, as well as installations that unfold beyond the bounds of their supports, exploring expressions that resonate with the surrounding environment.
1999 Born in Aichi, Japan
2022 B.F.A Tokyo University of the Arts, Bachelor of Oil Painting
2025 M.F.A., Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Painting
[Solo exhibition]
2025 Maki Fine Arts, Tokyo
2023 APdonou, Ibaraki
Flat River Gallery, Tokyo
Kameido Art Center, Tokyo
[Selected Group exhibition]
2024 "Kobe Rokko Meets Art 2024 beyond" Mt. Rokko, Hyogo
"Patterns and Distance" Maki Fine Arts, Tokyo
"act.Inframince" OGUMAG, Tokyo
"Hue and Cry." Paichyu, Tokyo
2023 "BUG SCHOOL： Let’s Move Our Body!" BUG, Tokyo
"Uraraka Painting Festival" The 5th Floor, Tokyo
2022 "VANI" 2k540 AKI-OKA ARTISAN, Tokyo
"Habitable Zone to everyone" artgallery Opaltimes, Osaka
"HANCO Exhibition" Flat River Gallery, Tokyo
"The Morning Star" Art Space Ginga 101, Tokyo
2021 "I won’t be around tomorrow," Meguro rusu, Tokyo
"Say Hello to Strangers" Ge-shuku 103 gallery, Kanazawa
"In that case, what will I do? 〜The Drawer of Prints 〜" Geidai Art Plaza, Tokyo
"The 23rd “1_WALL” Graphics Competition" Guardian Garden, Tokyo
2020 "Silence" Meguro Museum of Art, Citizens Gallery, Tokyo
2019 "Tokyo Independent 2019" Chinretsukan Gallery, Tokyo University of The Arts, Tokyo
"Portrait" Yuga Gallery, Tokyo University of The Arts, Tokyo
2018 "National University PrinkMaking Exhibition" Machida City Museum of PrintMaking Art, Tokyo
[Award]
2023 7th KUMA FOUNDATION Scholarship
2022 Tawara Prize
9th Kamiyama Foundation Scholarship
Mr. O Memorial Prize Scholarship
Tokyo University of the Arts Purchase Award
2021 42nd The International TAKIFUJI Art Award Special Prize
The 23rd 1_WALL Graphics Competition Finalist
2019 Kume Keiichiro Scholarship Prize
[Public Collection]
The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts