Naoyo Fukuda | Hinakumori

YOKOTA TOKYO is pleased to present Hinakumori, the solo exhibition by Naoyo Fukuda at the gallery for the first time.

Fukuda creates works by engaging in the quiet and repetitive acts such as writing, sewing, erasing, and reading, using everyday materials like papers, threads, books, and stationery. Through the acts of folding, unraveling, shaving, and binding, she gently reveals the forms that precedes nouns. These forms sublimate the subtle presence of their memories or the accumulated time into more ubiquitous, anonymous ideas that eventually conjure up viewers’ own memories and feelings.

The exhibition’s title, Hinakumori, refers to a meteorological term for those moments in between clear and cloudy weather, when soft sunlight filters through a thin veil of clouds. This faint coexistence of brightness and shadow deeply resonates with Fukuda’s aesthetics.

Bathed in natural light, the gallery space brings forth the subtle details of Fukuda’s works―the fibers, traces, and gentle sway of threads―quietly into view. The time spending with her works that accompany the gaze toward the disappearing and retain the diminutive memories as if tracing the falling particles of light would evoke a prototype of our experience of seeing and feeling.

This exhibition is also an attempt to blend the both conceptual and physical forms that run through Fukuda’s practice into the actual space: fragments that carry the memories of books, drifting remnants from her creation, forms that hold the trace of words, and a sense of quietude. We hope that the quiet presences hidden behind visible things will gently arise within the gallery.