Manhattan Hosts Japanese Artists Exploring ‘Being’ in the Age of AI

On the evening of Saturday August 29 at Midtown Manhattan’s Gallery 60 NYC, four Japanese artists, a group referred to as the Polyphony, knelt on the gallery floor, surrounded by a ring of white coasters. Yui Koshiyama began abstractly watercoloring each round to ambient nature sounds, particularly bird chirps and rain pattering. The hues of green, blue, red, and yellow represented the progression of seasons. Souhei Yamaguchi joined her on the floor and gracefully gave a spark of life by drizzling shiny gold paint on each, while simultaneously hand-cutting dainty butterflies out of colored paper. The butterflies represented transformation and reincarnation. Ayano Todaka used her expertise in calligraphy to add a final swirly symbol to each coaster in black, while Akiyo Ochiai used the traditional technique Kirikane to decorate each butterfly with gold detailing.Each artist’s role was symbolic to the theme of the event: “Being.” After the performance, visitors were invited to add their own artwork to square pieces of white cardstock to answer the question “What does it mean to live?” The same question formed the spine of the “Being”, a five-day group exhibition that closed this week, presented by the Polyphony of four artists under the exhibition director Kiichi Takeuchi.According to Mr. Takeuchi, Polyphony’s origin story starts over a year ago at the gallery’s other location on 54th Street — Gallery Wave. Ms. Todaka attended the exhibition and, struck by the space, wanted to bring a show to New York. She reached out to a former classmate, Ms. Ochiai, an experienced Japanese curator who then brought in two more artists to the New York project.The show’s theme as a response to AI was not a curatorial concept imposed on the artists, but rather it emerged from the collective itself. Takeuchi described Polyphony as leaning toward humanity and life, steering away from the mechanical pace of the industry. That philosophy lines up neatly with the gallery’s own mission of promoting emerging artists in a space that was a private residence before it became a salon and quaint gallery space fifty years ago.Mr. Takeuchi, who has lived in the U.S. since 1998, compared the urban energy and diversity of New York City to the homogeneity of artists and culture in Japan. The exhibition’s internal organization is based on kishō-tenketsu, the traditional four-part narrative structure of a story: introduction, body, plot twist, and conclusion. Mapped onto Polyphony’s four artists, the arc ran as follows: Ms. Koshiyama depicted Meguru (circulation), a view of life centered on cycles; Mr. Yamaguchi captured the instantaneous moments of life referred to as Shun (the moment); Ms. Ochiai’s paintings correspond to Chi (wisdom) because knowledge is a tool for navigating and understanding life; lastly, Ms. Todaka’s art followed the theme of Den (transmission), which portrayed the passage of culture through time.‘Being.’ Via Gallery 60 NYCMr. Takeuchi did not fully grasp how the four practices would cohere until he watched the live performance. Indeed, Ms. Koshiyama confirmed that the artists did not create art together, but instead worked to combine their existing works under the singular theme of “Being.”Ms. Ochiai, exploring the “wisdom” theme, described her larger interest as more similar to physics than philosophy. She believes that emotion, like light and sound, moves in waves, which is why it is so difficult to control. That idea folds into her use of Kirikane, a 600-year-old Japanese technique of layering and cutting gold foil, historically used to decorate Buddhist statues so that the light of even a candle would illuminate a dark temple. Ms. Ochiai inherited the technique of heating foil to bond it, then cutting the design with a bamboo knife. Wisdom and knowledge, for her, function as tools to distinguish between a person’s psychological and physical pain. Ms. Ochiai was notably pragmatic about AI. She has chosen to accept and adapt to it, as long as she remains in control rather than being controlled. She compared AI to washing machines, saying that they left more time for other pursuits by freeing people from hand-washing clothing.Mr. Yamaguchi’s dripping techniques, visible in both his hung paintings and in the live-floor performance, represent his theme of an instant “moment.” They do not come with a plan. He simply waits for inspiration to “come down”, usually from fragments of daily life such as the news, film, or an ordinary incident.On AI, his position has recently shifted. He was opposed to AI prior to his trip to America because he worried it would make people lazy by doing the work for them. However, navigating an unfamiliar country required scheduling an itinerary and holding conversations, tasks that were made easier with AI. He now believes that AI’s value depends entirely on how it’s used. He strikingly compared it to holding a lit match — if you stop paying attention, it will burn you. However, when used carefully it acts as a tool: Light. In making his work, he uses AI as an influence on how he thinks while making something himself.‘Being.’ Via Gallery 60 NYCMs. Todaka’s theme, “Transmission”, draws on her second career. She trained in calligraphy as a child, studied Nihonga, and worked as a restorer of Buddhist statues and ritual objects. One of her contributions to the show is made from fragments from a restoration, which symbolizes carrying something old into the future so it survives to be encountered again. What I understood, from her translator, was that restoration was directly related to “transmission through time.”Her written artist statement shows that the formative memory she returns to is that of her deceased mother’s hands. Ms. Todaka carries the handmade, irreplaceable quality that her mother built into patchwork quilts and rhythmic gymnastics costumes into her own restorations and artwork. Her calligraphy, including the lettering on the exhibition’s poster, represents an expansion of that practice into performance. Working calligraphy into a live art piece formed a departure for her. Ms. Koshiyama’s theme, “Circulation”, is a sub-theme of her broader goal: To create art depicting the vitality of life. “The act of living is also about constant, ceaseless change”, she writes in her statement.In addition to being an artist, Ms. Koshiyama is also a tea farmer in Japan’s Kagoshima Prefecture, which is why she brought green tea as a complimentary gift. Nature, according to her, is a direct reflection of circulation — the consistent cycle of growing tea from nothing, harvesting, and then restarting the process.The exhibition reception attracted a broad and informal audience of collectors, students, and first time gallery-goers. They sat on the floor in enjoyment around the live demonstration. During their individual gallery walks, several visitors described a sense of calm settling over them as they moved through the room. Others were struck by the texture of many works that had layers and caught light differently. One visitor guessed (incorrectly) that a set of three-dimensional rose sculptures might have been made from recycled plastic water bottles.One high school student, visiting with her cousin, lingered at a wall of pieces she said were each tied to the childhood memories of the artist. She said it helped her recognize that a person builds an internal “visual catalogue” over a lifetime and that artists constantly draw on it without ever fully realizing it.

Manhattan Hosts Japanese Artists Exploring ‘Being’ in the Age of AI

Manhattan Hosts Japanese Artists Exploring ‘Being’ in the Age of AI

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