Past Exhibition

The Shiseido Gallery will hold an exhibition of a new installation by Mr. TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA. This installation will show light that fills the room with infinite color, giving visitors an opportunity to experience this mysterious light. Philosopher of nature, Newton, passed light through a transparent, polyhedral prism, showing that, in light, there exists a multitudinous number of colors. We feel that we can learn more about color through nature. Through the prism, we see beautiful rainbow beams of light emitting from spectral light.

Mr. TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA is well-renowned both in Japan and around the world as one of the creative people who influence the world through works created from experimental technologies and unhindered ideas in a wide range of fields such as design, art, and architecture. Until now, Mr. YOSHIOKA has focused on the relationship between nature and human beings, specifically pursuing research about the sensation that light brings. With this, he expresses his creations through unique techniques that reflect this research.

The seeds for his latest showcase were sown in 2013, during TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA_Crystallize, an exhibition held in Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. “Rainbow Church” was a giant architectural installation of some five hundred crystal prisms positioned to refract light in spectacular curves of color across the space it inhabited. Two years earlier, his extraordinary design for the architectural project “KOU-AN Glass Tea House” was presented at Glasstress 2011, the collateral event of the 54th La Biennale di Venezia, and in 2015, Yoshioka’s interpretation of the traditional Tea House was installed on the stage of Shogunzuka Mound, Seiryu-den, a precinct of Tendai Sect Shoren-in Temple in Kyoto, which is both a sacred Buddhist site and a designated Important Cultural Property of Japan. The structure captured the world’ imagination with an unprecedented design, allowing it to blend almost seamlessly with natural light reflected onto its glass. As well as exploring the vital relationship between time and light, YOSHIOKA’s concept of “reflection” also evoked the role of the ancient tea ceremony in Japanese culture, and echoed the original essence of Japanese identity that resides in the collective subconscious.

TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA    Designer / Artist

Born in Saga, Japan in 1967. He worked under Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake, and established his own studio, TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA INC. in 2000.

His experimental and innovative creations along with the nature and the senses, which transcend the boundaries of art, design, and architecture, are highly evaluated in the world. He received numbers of international design awards such as Design Miami Designer of the Year 2007. The paper chair “Honey-pop” (2001), Baking A Bread Chair “PANE Chair” (2006) and the Glass project, which started in 2002 - these art masterpieces have received high acclaim in the world. Some of his most important works are exhibited as a part of permanent collections in the world’s well-known museums such as Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Centre National d’ Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Vitra Design Museum. Some pieces of “Water Block” are permanently exhibited with masterpieces of Monet, Cézanne and Renoir in the Impressionist Gallery at Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

He exhibited the Natural crystal chair “VENUS” at Second Nature, 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT (2008), “SNOW” at Sensing Nature, Mori museum (2010), and the architectural projects “Rainbow Church” - the stained glass composed of crystal prisms - at the solo exhibition TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA_Crystallize, Museum of Modern Art Tokyo (2013). The design of the “KOU-AN Glass Tea House” was presented at Glasstress 2011, the collateral event of the 54th La Biennale di Venezia, and in 2015, it was unveiled at the stage of Seiryu-den in Kyoto which is in a precinct of Tendai Sect Shoren-in Temple designated as one of National treasures of Japan.