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Miki Morioka

CV

Miki Morioka was born in Tokyo in 1989. She graduated from the Department of Intermedia Art at Tokyo University of the Arts and completed her MFA at the same university.
Her practice primarily explores floor-based forms derived from her experiences of early childhood education and perceptual encounters within religious facilities.
Selected exhibitions include Pictura super Pavimentum (two-person exhibition with Shiho Saito, TOGA AOYAMA, 2025), Many Years / Marugame (curated by COBRA / XYZ institute, Kagawa, 2025), After They Left (curated by Kyoko Hamaguchi, Long Story Short NYC, New York, 2023), POP-UP “ARTIST RUNNING” #6 (curated by Hikotaro Kanehira, void+eaves, Tokyo, 2022), and Until I Hear My Voice (two-person exhibition with Chihiro Gompei, Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo, Tokyo, 2020).

Miki Morioka’s ongoing body of floor-based works is developed through research into the relationship between physical environments and human behavior—particularly the ways in which floors and grounds within religious and educational institutions can unconsciously shape actions, perception, and thought.
While functioning formally as architectural floor structures, the works also reflect Morioka’s personal experiences of early childhood education. Through their presentation within exhibition spaces, the works become autonomous sculptural forms, overlapping with images of fields and soil where crops are planted and cultivated.
Constructed from interconnected plywood components carved with grooves and fitted with tongue joints (sane), the works are designed to be both assembled and disassembled with ease. As a result, they can expand to occupy large areas of a space or exist discreetly within a small corner. Their modular structure also suggests the possibility that a single person can carry and relocate them through their own physical effort.
“As for floors, I imagine them as nutrient-rich planes,” Morioka says of her work. By foregrounding the floor—something that quietly supports our acts of standing, moving, and thinking—the works invite viewers to reconsider the foundations that structure both everyday experience and the act of exhibiting and perceiving art itself.

The work presented in this exhibition incorporates natural rubber derived from the sap of rubber trees, collected through incisions made in their bark. In her previous works, Morioka has used standardized industrial plywood panels (180 × 90 cm) to create transportable modular structures that extend across a space as floors. In this new work, she continues that practice while introducing natural rubber as a new material, opening up a further development within her exploration of floor-based forms.

Small perforations are made across the surfaces of both the plywood and rubber according to a uniform grid and fixed intervals. Each floor module contains the same pattern of holes, yet as the modules are rotated and connected, the relationships between neighboring holes shift. The internal order maintained within each individual module gives rise to new relationships when the modules are assembled into a larger floor surface, as points repeatedly move closer together or further apart.

It is through the act of looking at this uniform grid that subtle “errors” emerge. These minute deviations generate another kind of organic connection from within a system structured by rules and order. Although each floor panel is based on the same module, the changing orientation of the pieces continually alters the relationships between the points distributed across the surface. The resulting configurations do not resolve into fixed forms; rather, they resemble constellations whose appearance shifts according to one’s position and the manner in which the modules are connected. Emerging across the supporting plane of the floor, these networks of points move between order and chance, repetition and difference, continually producing new possibilities for connection.

Fumimaro Ayano

CV

Fumimaro Ayano was born in 1992 in Fukuoka. Having grown up between the United Kingdom and Japan, he now lives in Tokyo.

Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Royal Touch at Keijiban (Kanazawa, 2026–27), Why Don’t You Dance? at 18, Murata (Tokyo, 2025), Same as the Street at LAVENDER OPENER CHAIR (Tokyo, 2024, with Rob Halverson), Half & Half at Kunstakademie Münster (Münster, 2021, with Elliot Dijol), and exon at dragged out studio (Tokyo, 2020, with Mizutani Eiki). Selected group exhibitions include motivated bodies at KOMAGOME SOKO (Tokyo, 2024), Angel Pin Boogie at Paichu (Tokyo, 2023).

Fumimaro Ayano develops a practice at the intersection of sculpture, installation, and photography, through which he examines socio-cultural phenomena, linguistic situations, and fragments of history. His work engages with everyday objects and images, which he subtly alters and recontextualizes into arrangements that are at once spare and enigmatic. A central aspect of his approach lies in the use of found photographs—sourced from flea markets, online platforms, and elsewhere. Rather than seeking to elucidate their origin or fix their meaning, he explores their symbolic potential through sculptural fictions imbued with irony and a quiet sense of the absurd.

The work counting shelf (2024), presented in this exhibition, originated from Ayano watching a short clip from the TV series Friends. In the scene, Ross goes to get a spray tan and is instructed to count to five seconds before turning so that the tanning spray can cover his whole body evenly. However, due to a misunderstanding in the way he counts, he ends up being sprayed twice on the front of his body. The scene comically depicts a miscommunication between those who count seconds by saying “Mississippi” after each number in order to measure time accurately, and those who simply count from one to five.
Ayano lacquered the shelf the same number of times that Ross was spray-tanned in the scene.
Another work, tear, is an object that resists clear identification: it is uncertain whether it is a frame, a shape, a tear, or perhaps a paperweight heavy enough to tear paper. Because the work retains the form of a device used to hold frames at various angles, one recognizes that part of an actual frame has been used. As a result, it appears as though the object has lost its original function, acquired a different one, or perhaps simply been given form for its own sake.