HORI Kosai “Touching So Close and Having an Openness 2” (TOKYO)

Mizuma Art Gallery is pleased to present “Touching So Close and Having an Openness 2”, a solo exhibition by HORI Kosai, opening on Wednesday, August 6.

Initiated in 2020, Hori’s series Touching So Close and Having an Openness began in response to the rupture in society brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. From that starting point, the series has evolved into a deeply introspective body of work, probing the essence of expression and the very act of painting itself.

His practice of titling works after words that have resonated with him at particular moments remains central here as well. Touching So Close and Having an Openness has developed into a body of work that, while bearing the character of the times, is profoundly personal and therefore resonates with an intimate sensibility.

This exhibition showcases new works from the Touching So Close and Having an Openness series. Canvases of various sizes—large, medium, and small—are arranged throughout the gallery space. Vibrant colors approaching primary red, blue, and yellow; graceful flowing lines; and multilayered grounds beneath the surface come together with quiet conviction, harboring a force that seems to radiate from within.

Since the beginning of his career, Hori has consistently questioned the institutional frameworks of art. From his position “on the borderline,” he has resisted conformity to societal or artistic conventions, instead carving out a unique path through expression.

For Hori, painting is not a means of reproduction, but a trace of expression opened into space—an act that serves both as a response to the world and a question posed to it.

Looking back over more than half a century of artistic practice, this exhibition invites you to encounter Hori Kosai in the present moment—who continues to move forward by never ceasing to paint. We sincerely hope you will take this opportunity to witness the current state of his ever-developing vision.

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There was never any need for it to be called “painting (art)” in the first place.

What existed first was surely a form of expression that could not be named.

Still, if it came to be called “painting (art),” I accepted that designation.

But it wasn’t a name I chose for myself.

The “standards” by which people name or choose something are always values that can be turned on their head—like “war.”

War is always, even now, a conflict between two opposing forms of justice, each grounded in its own standards, facing each other from opposite sides of a boundary.

I have long declared that I stand on the borderline of such criteria.

I have continually directed doubt toward the very idea of “principle”—the belief in absolute standards.

This is also a rejection of closed-off, self-contained expressions that resolve themselves within the bounds of such principles.

And so, while I have accepted the name “painting (art),” I continue seeking those unnamed expressions that barely “open” along the trembling borders of what we call painting.

To keep painting that faint “openness”—

not to depict “something,” but space itself.

That is what I have taken upon myself.

– HORI Kosai