EXHIBITIONS
Kohei Yamada “The landscape divides, and still I go outside.”
Dates: Oct 3 – 31, 2026
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto
Opening reception: Saturday, Oct 3, 17:00 – 19:00 (Roppongi)
Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto is pleased to present “The landscape divides, and still I go outside.”, a solo exhibition of the work of Kohei Yamada, on view from Saturday, October 3 to Saturday, October 31. Held concurrently with Yamada’s solo exhibition “green back / front” at Taka Ishii Gallery Roppongi, this exhibition will feature approximately 14 of Yamada’s latest semi-sculptural works.
Earlier this year, my mother died.
Since then, a street near my family home that I’ve walked down countless times has come to look completely different.
Of course, nothing about the street itself has changed.
The buildings, the width of the street, almost everything there is unchanged, but to me it’s no longer the same landscape.
The landscape before me now is one without my mother.
But when I walk through it, I remember when she was alive. Then I go on to think about what it would be like if she were still alive now.
I’m looking at the same place, yet there are multiple landscapes there.
Recently, I’ve begun to think of them as several sides of a single landscape.
On the other side of the landscape before me is the landscape as it used to be.
On yet another side is a landscape that never actually existed, but might have.
Rather than overlapping, they feel more like one thing facing in several different directions.
Like the two sides of a coin, when you’re looking at one, you can’t see the other. But just because you can’t see it does not mean it’s not there.
Depending on where you’re looking from and what you remember, a side you couldn’t see before can suddenly turn toward you.
Through memory, what had seemed to be a single landscape gradually divides.
I don’t want to put it back together again.
I want to remember it as divided.
I want to stay within a landscape with many sides, and still go outside it.
Kohei Yamada
September 2026
The series of semi-sculptural works in this exhibition grew out of Yamada’s exploration of the frame as an outer structure supporting his works on paper. By joining cut pieces of wood and attaching them to paper, he extends ideas he has explored in his paintings, including the nature of form and depth produced by overlapping, into three dimensions. A thin, flat drawing incorporates materials shaped by qualities within the image and becomes a freestanding work. At the same time, the resulting hybrid object encompasses the discontinuities inherent in combining dissimilar elements, crossing established category boundaries. Another feature of the production process is collaboration with others, introducing new perspectives and opening up the possibility of developing the work in more multilayered ways. These multifaceted works also connect to Yamada’s personal experience of landscape, and can be read from many different angles. As they interact with traces of the past in the machiya townhouse that serves as the venue, a composite image unfolds.
Kohei Yamada (b. 1997, Osaka) graduated with a major in oil painting from Musashino Art University in 2020 and completed his master’s degree in the same field at Kyoto University of the Arts in 2022. He is currently based in Tokyo. His solo exhibitions include “The Lightness of Support”, Sukima (Tokyo, 2025); “Borderline”, Arario Gallery Seoul (2025); “Strikethrough”, Taka Ishii Gallery (Tokyo, 2023); “Like Hiding It”, biscuit gallery (Tokyo, 2022); and “The Way the Lines Come In”, MtK Contemporary Art (Kyoto, 2022). Yamada has also participated in group exhibitions such as “Brick, Breath, Horizon” Zian Gallery x Lisson Gallery (Shanghai, 2025); “Fluid in Forms”, Arario Gallery Shanghai (2025); “Everywhere It Goes”, Mai 36 Galerie (Zurich, 2024); “A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection”, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2024); “Collection Exhibition”, Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (2024); and “Abstraction (re)creation – 20 under 40”, Le Consortium (Dijon, 2024). He was a BUG Art Award finalist in 2024 and a Contemporary Art Foundation (CAF) Award finalist in 2020.
