Artist Profile

Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono was born in Toyo in 1933 and after finishing her study in philosophy in Japan, she moved to New York in 1953 and became part of the city’s vibrant avant-garde activities. Since the 1960’s Ono has had many exhibitions and performances around the world, many of which are now historically well remembered for their contributions to the progress of art history. Ono’s artistic formats have varied from fine art, music, film, performance, and poetry and she has influenced key artistic movements including, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, Video Art and Feminism.

She has had numerous museum exhibitions. Recent large-scale museum shows include “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971” at MOMA in 2015, and “YOKO ONO : FROM MY WINDOW” at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2015. In the 2000’s, “Y E S YOKO ONO”, organized by the Japan Society in New York traveled to 6 cities in North America from 2000-2002 and also traveled in Asia from 2003 to 2004, including 5 cities in Japan (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, the Hiroshima Contemporary Art Museum, Mito Art Center etc.) In 2009 Ono participated in the Venice Biennale where she received the prestigious Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement. She received the award “the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize” and held a solo exhibition The Road of Hope in 2010.

Hiroshi Sugito

Hiroshi Sugito was born in 1970 in Aichi prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Department of Japanese Painting, Faculty of Arts, Aichi Prefectural College of Arts in 1992. He is currently Associate Professor of the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. He has exhibited extensively both in Japan and internationally since the 1990s. His major solo exhibitions include “FOCUS” (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, USA, 2006), “prime and foundation” (Miyagi Museum of Art, Miyagi, Japan, 2015), “frame and refrain” (Musée Bernard Buffet, Shizuoka, Japan, 2015), ”particles and release” (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan, 2016), and “Hiroshi Sugito module or lacuna” (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 2017). He has also held eight solo exhibitions at Mark Foxx Gallery in Los Angeles.
His Significant group exhibitions include “Winter Garden：The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art” (curated by Midori Matsui, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, 2009; traveled to Japanisches Kulturinstitut, Cologne, Germany, 2009 / The Japan Foundation, Tronto, Tronto, Canada, 2010 / Galeri’a Arnold Belkin, Museo Universitario del Chopo、Mexico City, Mexico, 2011), “Garden of painting – Japanese Art of the 00s” (The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, 2010), and “Logical Emotion – Contemporary Art from Japan” (Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland, 2014; traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow MOCAK, Krakow, Poland, 2015 / Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale), Halle, Germany, 2015) among many others.

Koji Nakazono

Koji Nakazono was born in 1989 in Kanagawa, and died in July 2015 (at 25 years old). He graduated from the Oil Painting course of Tokyo University of the Arts in 2012. In the same year he was selected for “Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi 2012” and received the Tomio Koyama Award and the Audience Award.
He held solo exhibitions at Tomio Koyama Gallery in 2013 and at 8/ ART GALLERY/ Tomio Koyama Gallery in 2014. His first museum solo exhibition was “Koji Nakazono: On the Edge—Places I wanted to see “ at Yokosuka Museum of Art, Kanagawa in 2018.

His works were exhibited at “The Way of Painting” Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, 2014, “NEW VISION SAITAMA 5 The Emerging Body” at The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama In 2017, “Japanorama: New Vision of JAPAN from 1970” at Centre Pompidou-Metz, France in 2017,  “7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art: Clouds⇄Forests” at New Tretyakov Gallery Moscow, Russia in 2017, “DESIRE: A REVISION FROM THE 20TH CENTURY TO THE DIGITAL AGE” at Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2019.

His works are included in the public collection of , The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Takamatsu Art Museum. 

8/ tv documentary video at Koji Nakazono exhibition, 2014
https://vimeo.com/101279295
*This video has sounds. Please note the volume may be large.

director : Masaya Suzuki
filmed by : Shintaro Yamanaka
music by : yuichi NAGAO
presented by : Shibuya Hikarie 8/

Mika Ninagawa

Photographer, Director
Mika Ninagawa has been awarded numerous photography awards, such as Kimura Ihei Award. She has directed a number of video works including the films “Sakuran” (2007), “Helter Skelter” (2012), “Diner”(2019) and “No Longer Human”(2019). Currently her original drama for Netflix, “Followers” is released in 190 countries worldwide. In 2008, her solo exhibition “Mika Ninagawa: Earthly Flowers, Heavenly Colors” toured several museums throughout Japan, attracting a total of 180,000 visitors. In 2010, Ninagawa published a monograph by Rizzoli N.Y. In 2012, Ninagawa won the Silver Prize at the Shindo Kaneto Awards with “Helter Skelter”. She held extensive solo exhibitions mainly in Asian cities such as Taipei and Shanghai where they gathered the greatest number of visitors in their history. Her solo exhibition “Into Fiction/Reality Mika Ninagawa” started its tour from Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto in 2018 and will travel until 2021 throughout museums in Japan.

For more information on the artist, please see the following URL.
https://mikaninagawa.com