Exhibition Dates
September 3 (Thu) - 20 (Sun), 2026
Opening Hours
12:00 - 19:00
Closed
Monday
Minnano Gallery
2F, 4-14-3 Higashiueno, Taito-ku, Tokyo
Admission
Free
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A Landscape Nowhere, Here and Now
Minnano Gallery is pleased to present nowhere, a solo exhibition by Masaki Okuten.
Through a process of repeatedly layering paint and inscribing the very act of making into the pictorial surface, Okuten has explored a form of painting that does not rely on specific imagery. Bringing together primarily new works alongside selected works from recent years, this exhibition traces the continuation of that practice while creating a space structured around a new perspective: “landscape.”
We invite you to experience at the gallery the new directions opening up in Okuten’s painting.
Masaki Okuten
Graduated in 2012 from Musashino Art University, Department of Painting, Oil Painting Course.
Through painting and installation, he explores the phenomena that art can bring to people, working with primal themes such as the origin of lines and the collective unconscious. His practice challenges the very habit of seeking meaning in abstract art, aiming instead to uncover new values and meanings in minimal, unmarked traces that resist easy interpretation.
The Destination Is Nowhere
Text by Yoichi Tamori, Minnano Gallery
While traveling through the Kanto region to research old Buddhist temples, I once came across an unexpected landscape.
It was an abandoned piece of land that appeared to have once been farmland. The ground before me lay slightly lower than the road, with a thicket of trees visible beyond it. Google Maps told me that I had arrived at my destination, yet the land in front of me was completely overgrown with tall grass, making it seem impossible to go any farther. It did not feel like my destination, though perhaps it really was. In the end, unable even to determine that much, I left.
Looking at Masaki Okuten’s recent works, I found myself remembering this landscape. There was something in the series of paintings created for his solo exhibition nowhere that gave me a sense of never quite being able to arrive.
Okuten’s paintings are built from multiple layers of paint, intricately overlapping one another. The line that appears last was the line placed there first, and the layer that seems closest to us is also the deepest. Looking at these surfaces, I find myself thinking of a shogi board. With every move, the board opens onto a new position. A move made early in the game, for instance, may only reveal its significance toward the end.
Okuten’s process unfolds in much the same way. Each time he places a color or draws a line, he responds to the state of the painting at that particular moment. Rather than working toward a predetermined final image, he builds up a dialogue with the surface, and the work emerges as the result of that exchange.
Given this improvisational process, Okuten is not attempting to depict any particular or concrete thing. At the same time, finding some kind of image in the resulting surface is a natural act of viewing, something the artist himself has accepted as unavoidable. This time, however, “landscape” is established as a premise from the outset.
nowhere means a place that is nowhere, but it can also be read as now here—“here, now.” We are told that this is our current location, yet where exactly “here” is never becomes clear. The abandoned land I encountered was much the same. The map told me that I had arrived at my destination. Yet until the end, I never knew where I actually was.
The landscapes that appear in Okuten’s works in this exhibition are landscapes of nowhere, here and now.
Their locations are not specified. Yet when they appear before us as our “current location,” we find ourselves placed under the same conditions as the artist. We now stand at the point where Okuten himself stood while making the work.
At a current location that is nowhere.
© Minnano Gallery