YOKOTA TOKYO is pleased to present the exhibition “Kazuo Okazaki: Mono no Kioku (The Memory of Objects) — A Reconsideration.”

Rooted in his concept of the “Supplement” (hoi), the works of Kazuo Okazaki have been intimately intertwined with memory.

In his early childhood, Okazaki witnessed a series of scenes and objects—the sight of threshing brown rice by pounding it with an empty glass bottle, adults wielding bamboo spears, toy dolls, vacant lots, tabi socks, “black rain,” and the Japanese national flag (Hinomaru).

Among these wartime and immediate postwar scenes, the “things” that had lost their original function remained in his memory and eventually took shape as works of art. For Okazaki, the act of making was at once an act of perceiving—a sustained gaze that pierces beyond the visible and extends across time.

For an artist born in 1930, these scenes encountered in his boyhood may have been deeply connected with the foundation of the sculptural sensibility that would later unfold throughout his career.

For me, things of the past, things held in my memory, things internalized, and the things I have done are vital sources for art and catalysts for my work. History is a chain of “supplements.” In fact, it might be called a “supplement” in itself. […] I have always thought that it would be enough if I could complete my whole self by fulfilling a single way of thinking during my lifetime.

— From an interview conducted during his solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, in 2010.

In April 2000, our gallery presented Okazaki’s solo exhibition “Mono no Kioku” (The Memory of Objects). The present exhibition revisits that earlier moment and serves as a point of departure for reconsidering his body of work as a whole.

Through the works that imbued with memory, we hope that this exhibition will provide an occasion to encounter and to further engage with Okazaki’s thought.