Contemporary Art Akemi Kodama Exhibition | COLLECTIVE SELF Archive

Photography: Abstract Perspective — The Boundary Line between "Meaning" and "Sensation"

Seventeen photographic works that close up and abstract everyday scenes. Intentionally blurred "words" are layered on top. The moment we see text, we unconsciously look for "meaning." However, we should also be able to just "feel" the colors and shapes beneath. Do we capture the meaning, or do we simply immerse ourselves? This exhibition explores the "ambiguity of perception" that fluctuates at that very boundary line.

A Book Read by Rhythm — 128 Pages Interpreted through Physicality

This is a "book artwork" spanning 128 pages. The left and right pages feature complementary colors and various paper textures (the same materials used in the artworks) pasted together, creating accidental encounters every time a page is turned. This is not a book to be "read," but a dynamic medium designed to make you experience "sensation," "time," and "breath" through the rhythm of turning pages.

Viewing Art through "Frames" and "Magnifying Glasses": A New Perspective

A large collage artwork displayed in the center of the venue. It was presented to let viewers directly feel the texture of the raw, exposed canvas. Holding up a "rusted frame" allows you to crop your own favorite section within the boundaries. Gently bringing a "magnifying glass" close reveals the rhythms and textures of the paper materials and layered paint. Shifting from a gaze that scans the whole to a perspective that actively selects a part. You can experience the moment art is reborn again and again by your own hands.

Jenga: Stacking "Uncertain and Free Choices"

An interactive Jenga artwork where each piece is adorned with words and collages. Roll the dice and freely stack the Jenga piece in a new spot. Things that crumble, and things that are newly born. "The scenery of this very moment" rising between that uncertain balance serves as a metaphor for the choices we make every single day.

Rubik's Cube: Approximately 18 Quintillion Combinations

An artwork featuring collages applied to two Rubik's Cubes. The number of possible combinations is around 18 quintillion (1.8 × 10^19). With just a slight shift, a completely unique color combination appears, one that may never be repeated again. Our everyday moments are a continuous series of changes just like this cube. It visualizes the "miracle of the moment"—why "this exact state" currently exists right before our eyes.

Monthly Calendar: "Strata of Time"

An accumulation of time (process art) documenting everyday fragments without fail for 128 consecutive days. It visualizes the journey of how daily acts, carried out quietly, eventually rise up as a single landscape. The sense of achievement from the growing numbers and the tangible feeling of survival—of "being here now"—manifests physically as the thickness of the pages. Even the intentionally left "blank pages" shape a part of the self as fragments of "precious days forgotten."

SNS Project: An Abstract Perspective Shared with Everyone

In an online initiative launched ahead of the exhibition, 125 entries of "dated fragments of daily life" were gathered over two months. Dates and times carved out in different regions and distinct moments. By stripping away the practical meaning of everyday landscapes and reinterpreting them purely as colors and shapes, these fragments met in an online space, connecting into a powerful expression of a massive collective community living through the same era of "now."

Workshop — A Letter to the Future: "Memories of Carved Time"

This workshop invites participants to write a letter to their future self three months from now after fully experiencing the exhibition. They select a fragment from the prepared artwork materials, mark it with "I am here," and seal away their current thoughts. It is an experience designed to cultivate an awareness that the present flows continuously into the future.

Stepping away from the rapid pace of daily life to converse with oneself, this time serves as a mechanism that spans across time and space, linking separate points on one's timeline. Throughout the exhibition period, 20 participants took part. Thank you very much.

Objects in the Back Room: Accumulation of the Unconscious

The back room of the venue. Here, objects possessing physical mass, such as wires and old screws, quietly reside. The faint swaying of the wires represents shifting emotions, while the gravity of the screws and wooden blocks speaks of unalterable past facts, conversing directly with the viewer's unconscious mind.

Behind the Scenes of Thought: The Evolution of Creation

In the back room, the vast intellectual process underlying this exhibition was laid open to the public. 155 pages of handwritten notebooks compiled leading up to the show, a 57-page movie review booklet containing conceptual reflections, and photographs recording the production process. This "invisible mass of thought," forged through repetitive self-questioning and trial and error, is the most vital source of this solo exhibition.