O JUN "Seeing Flowers, Seeing TV, Seeing a Cup" (TOKYO)

Mizuma Art Gallery is pleased to present “Seeing Flowers, Seeing TV, Seeing a Cup”, a solo exhibition by O JUN commencing Wednesday, October 29, 2025.

Since his 2019 solo exhibition “Unfinished Creation”, O JUN has continued to present new works in over forty solo and group exhibitions, even amidst the pandemic. Most recently, his participation in “GODZILLA THE ART EXHIBITION” at the Mori Arts Center Gallery has drawn renewed attention to his practice.

From February through April of this year, O JUN produced a large-scale oil painting depicting a life-sized car rendered across three joined canvases. Commuting daily with a season pass to a rented factory studio in Kawaguchi, he wrestled with his brush before coarse linen canvases, completing the work as the season shifted from winter to spring.

Entitled Ankoku Drive, the painting draws on memories of a close painter friend who was fond of cars. Over the past few years, O JUN has revisited this same motif and title three times. In this latest version, painted at full scale rather than in reduced proportion, he sought to test whether a painting could still exist as a painting even while transcending its conventional framework—a bold challenge unlike anything he has attempted before. The colourful circles surrounding the car are also characteristic of the approach O JUN has explored in recent years, making this piece emblematic of his current body of work.

At the centre of this exhibition, Ankoku Drive will be shown alongside selected works from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as new pieces from ongoing series such as Life of Mountain (2010–), which the artist has described as concluding the series, and Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, which he has continued to paint over many years. Together, these works trace O JUN’s creative trajectory across more than four decades, presenting both his evolution and his current position as an artist.

Throughout the exhibition period, O JUN will also perform his “Uncommemorative Photos,” in which he takes photographs together with visitors.

The exhibition title is drawn from a passage in the artist’s 1998 novella Flower, TV, Cup, which accompanied a set of 42 works on paper and a drawing book of the same name. Reflecting O JUN’s own memories and experiences, the story follows a boy on a day of mountain climbing, unfolding through conversations and events that stray from both the mountain path and reason itself. Regarding the work, O JUN explains:

“By stepping into finite events and landscapes, the comfortable sense of distance dissolves, and in forgetting it, one discovers one’s true self and the object before them. The boy enters the mountains and, in his suffering, begins to see all manner of things.”

He adds that today, he feels he has returned—not to the exact same place as then, but to one slightly shifted from it.

Coinciding with the exhibition, photographer KUGE Yasuhide will publish a photo book documenting O JUN’s activities, titled O-SAN.

We warmly invite you to view this exhibition, which serves as a prelude to O JUN’s seventieth birthday next year, and to join us in celebrating this milestone.

Related Events:

1. Performance by O JUN: “Uncommemorative Photos”

Held periodically during the exhibition (schedule will be announced on social media and other channels)

2. O JUN × KUGE Yasuhide Talk Event: “O-SAN”

Friday, November 21, 2025: 19:00-20:00

Venue: Mizuma Art Gallery