KOSAKU KANECHIKA is presenting Yutaka Aoki’s exhibition “Knots and Pebbles” at its Kyobashi gallery from June 12 to July 25, 2026. In this interview, art critic and curator Motoaki Hori speaks with the artist about the underlying thinking that supports his practice. Through what kinds of perception and experience is the world grasped, and how is that translated into the surface of a painting? Tracing the process from the conception of the exhibition through to the making of the works, this interview explores the nature of Yutaka Aoki’s practice and thinking.

──First, let’s start with this solo exhibition. Among your new works, there are square blue pieces. Could you tell me a little about them? When I saw these works, the deep blue surfaces evoked the sea, while the silver aluminum parts suggested rocks protruding from the water, and the parts that are spray-painted called to mind splashing waves. In a way, they felt like scale models of a jagged, wave-swept seascape viewed from directly overhead, creating a strange illusion where an object that would normally lie flat on the floor was instead hanging on the wall vertically. Was that effect something you intended?

Aoki　Yes, that strangeness is crucial. I established the square as a single unit. Specifically, the self-similarity inherent in a square. I wanted to use that structure as a starting point. If you bisect a square, you get two rectangles. Divide those down the middle, and you get four squares, a process that can be repeated infinitely. It possesses a dynamic quality of both infinite contraction and infinite expansion. I felt that establishing this state was necessary.
As you noted, the image evokes the natural world. It can also be interpreted as a territory. The work is ultimately completed through the act of spraying. I puncture the spray can and, rather than simply spraying from the nozzle, release the contents in a sudden, high-pressure burst. The expelled material flies out forcefully, passing through spaces and colliding with clumps of paint to push them back as it settles onto the surface. I wanted to create a state where colors are fixed simultaneously in a multitude of forms.
The fact that it evokes images of the sea or rocky terrain suggests that I was able to incorporate the structure, or rather the intelligence, of the natural world into the finished piece.
I made four pieces in this series, and each one has paint sprayed in from a different direction — top, bottom, left, right — each suggesting a different dynamism.

──I think it would be helpful to hear about your production process to supplement what you’ve just explained, so I’d like to ask you to walk us through it once more — or rather, give us a recap. First, you apply the base color to the surface. Then, using a medium, you build up the shapes — the protruding elements. After that, you mask the areas where color has been painted, apply silver paint to the protruding parts, then peel off the masking and spray. Is that the correct order of steps?

Aoki That’s correct. I begin by composing the image around color, aiming for a smooth finish at this initial stage. Next, I work with brushes, both standard brushes and wider ones. Depending on the piece, I also affix structural clumps of paint which are the protrusions you mentioned. Afterwards, I apply masking tape that precisely follows the brushstrokes I have made, followed by spray-painting. Those protrusions are created by mixing several types of media, which I craft into sculptural shapes. I place the masses on a table and shape them using brushes, almost as if carving their form. However, they take about two months to cure. During that time, I manipulate the material by hanging, twisting, or folding it. As inside and outside invert — what was once the front surface slipping to the back, undried sections tearing open to reveal themselves — I make the pieces as something bound up with a twisted space-time. Once sufficiently hardened, I affix the protrusions to the picture plane.

──What struck me this time and made me think these works might actually be better suited horizontally was the very strong sculptural impression they give. While you’ve included protruding elements in your canvases before, those always felt like they were simply parts that made up the flat plane. This time, though, I really felt the presence of sculpture. Going back to what I mentioned earlier about it resembling sea spray — if you look closely at the painting, the base color is actually a fairly pale blue, whereas the sprayed blue is quite dark. That created a kind of reversal for me, producing the illusion that white sea spray was flying, via the spray technique, over a dark blue background.

Aoki Yes. For the sake of convenience, I refer to it as the “underlying color,” and I have crafted it to be neither light nor dark. I create formations where clumps of paint partially lift off the canvas, or where cave-like spaces emerge, allowing the sprayed color to pass through them. I have also structured it so that the sprayed color, despite sharing the same layer, appears to move back and forth in depth, creating an intricate interplay of colors within that single plane.
Since I treat color as a substitute for light, in these pieces the color shifts into an aggregate of coarse grains the further it gets from the point where it was sprayed. Built into this are both the paintings’ layers and the way they relate to time.

──Speaking of spray paint, you have incorporated it into your practice for a long time. In your early origami-style pieces, or the works where you painted mountains using a white mixture of paint and medium over a white base, the spray paint seemed to act as rays of light. It changed how the artwork looked depending on where the viewer stood, and served to make visible the things that were not apparent while you were actually painting. Have you noticed any shift or evolution in how you use spray paint itself?

Aoki Yes. I have also introduced the method of opening a hole directly into the spray can as part of my process.

──Is the effect significantly different compared to when it is dispensed from a nozzle?

Aoki It becomes something else. The contents are released at once, like a fire extinguisher, so the amount of paint and the speed at which it is dispersed are different. The clumps of pigment that normally remain stuck inside the spray can also get released, so it produces a different effect, or meaning, than when sprayed straight from the nozzle. It also affects the way the colors layer on top of each other.

──I would also like to ask about your other new works. They are multi-panel sets consisting of stretched canvas paintings, each measuring 23 by 16 centimeters. The largest set is made up of 24 panels and arranged in a grid of four rows and six columns, most of which is installed along the gallery’s longest wall, with one column displayed on the opposite wall, both positioned quite high up. How did you decide on this high placement?

Aoki I wanted to create a situation where the spatial coordinates felt complex and intertwined.
To start, I decided to hang the works on the shorter walls at a height that aligned with the viewer’s natural line of sight. In contrast, I chose to position the 24-piece set in a way that avoided a direct line of sight – requiring the viewer to look up, look down, or crouch to see it so as to make more room for the viewer’s body to enter into the work.

──The panels that would normally have been displayed where there is an opening in the wall of the gallery have ended up exhibited on the opposite wall.

Aoki I wanted to do it that way. When planning the space for this exhibition, Kanechika-san and I gave this a lot of thought.
We put one of the six columns in the set, which originally consists of four rows and six columns, right up front.

──Given the flow of movement through the gallery this time, that’s the first thing you see.

Aoki As you walk through the opening in the wall of the gallery space, the panels that would normally be shown on the wall where your back is now facing are displayed right in front of you instead.
This creates the impression that you are just beginning to glimpse part of the entire work—these first four panels—through the opening in the wall before entering from outside the room, when, in fact, you end up emerging from the place in the work where those four panels would normally have been exhibited. I decided to format the exhibition like that, because I wanted to create a structure that would leave viewers not knowing where they were spatially—whether they were inside or outside.

──I would also like to ask about the method you used to create this multi-panel work. For instance, you use a variety of colors and different shapes for the protrusions. How do you decide on the combinations? Specifically, how do you determine which colors go together, which colors pair with which sculptural shapes, and where those protrusions are positioned?

Aoki I began by deciding at the start that there would be 24 panels in the set when everything was completed. I made it so that each piece remained in its own separate, independent state, but that, in the end, it all came to 24 panels. As for the colors, when selecting the 24 pieces from among the completed works, I used the visible light spectrum as the underlying basis for the way I combined them.

──Did you also take the spectrum of light into consideration when determining where to place the 24 panels?

Aoki Yes. I arranged the works in a way that felt appropriate after having taken the entire exhibition space into consideration. I feel if the space were to change, the layout of the works would also change.

──Looking at your past solo exhibitions — for example, “Today’s” in 2019 or “INTO THE AIR” in 2020 — I believe you also did two-tier hangings back then. But at that time, I think the individual pieces were larger, and each independent work was hung in that two-tier format. So, what would you say is the biggest difference between those and the sets of works this time? Is there a calculated element to it — like an initial combination based on the spectrum, for instance?

Aoki I made ‘the unit’ a central thread running through this entire exhibition. What functions as the unit — as the content of the work — is different this time.

──How did the 23-by-16-cm size of this work come about?

Aoki For instance, just as water droplets can maintain their edges due to surface tension, this size allows me to see the scope of my own range, so to speak. Maybe you could call it a unit that my consciousness is able to respond to. I get the impression that this size provides an appropriate edge, whether you can grasp it or not. And the proportions are good, too. When I decide on the size of a work, I give thought to its proportions.

──Could you also tell us about the title of this exhibition? Your exhibition titles are always quite unique — “Treading Along the Window” (2021), “The Walking Bride” (2022), “U” (2025) — and they always connect to the works on display and the concepts behind them. This time you’ve given it the title “Knots and Pebbles.” What was the thinking behind that choice?

Aoki I gave it a title that refers to movement and units. I took the square as a unit, and the fractal structure inherent in the square contains a dynamism of infinite contraction and expansion. Ultimately, the word “pebble” (tsubute in Japanese) emerged as a term associated with this unit.

──Going by that logic, does that mean the first square piece represents a “knot?”

Aoki Yes. It is a “knot,” and the beginning of a “pebble.”

──And, those elements expand, or rather, proliferate, turning into multi-panel works…

The press release for this exhibition mentions the concept of a four-dimensional cube. It is an unfamiliar concept to most, and to be completely honest, I found some parts of it difficult to grasp myself. What originally sparked your interest in four-dimensional geometry? Your previous work has often seemed to move back and forth between two and three dimensionality, but what was the catalyst that sparked your interest in or awareness of the fourth dimension in your creative practice?

Aoki I don’t understand the fourth dimension either. (Laughs.) However, I think of it as a metaphor for people’s active thinking and physicality.

If I look back at my practice, a large part of my interest is where the painting is established in the first place. The cubism and collage practiced by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were great inventions that folded space-time in two dimensions. I would like to try to reopen what is being folded. I start this process by adding time to this three-dimensional space we live in. It comes from wanting to intervene in the time both within the canvas and outside it.

If the dimensional perception changes, the way we perceive the very environment in which we live also changes. I want to try doing this through painting. Of course, the fourth dimension cannot be perceived. It can’t — but I hope to be able to touch a fragment of it if I can combine it with painting’s inherent ability to move back and forth through space-time.

──You just mentioned the concept of time, and my initial thought was that a distinct awareness of time must be at play here. However, my first impression of the square work was that it felt very much like a still image, as if you had captured a single, fleeting moment of movement and deliberately extracted it. Is there some kind of conscious approach on your part to subvert or invert that dynamic?

Aoki There is also an element of cutting or severing, like the blinking of an eye. (In this exhibition, I’m also presenting new works from a series inspired by blinking.) And, I have created the work as something that is made whole through the intervention of the person standing in front of it — something that is amplified by the presence of a person.

──So, with those four canvases, each one is structured by the spray paint applied from a different direction, or something to that effect?

Aoki Yes, I wanted to create a situation where there’s something like a magnetic field — or maybe I should say, a twisted state.

──Does that also explain why you chose to hang the work on the wall vertically, rather than horizontally?

Aoki While I’m making the work, I lay it flat, or tilt it slightly and let gravity help dry the paint. When I’m making a larger piece, I sometimes stand on a stepladder and look down at it. As I continue to look at portions of it from various directions while I work, I’m always looking at fragments of time. That eventually ends up hanging on the wall in a twisted way. That’s exactly the point you picked up on when you said the work is interesting as something horizontal. Even though it’s hung on the wall, you can intervene from many different coordinates.

──In preparing for this interview, I went back and reread the press releases from your past solo exhibitions. Your statements talk about things like the issues of today’s digitalized society, or the impressions you had visiting the ruins of Ayutthaya, and it made me realize — more than I’d expected — just how much your real, lived experience has been involved in your creative process. But when you look only at the works themselves, one gets a very strong impression that you’re someone who shuts himself away in the studio in order to experiment.

Aoki Basically, I create by repeatedly testing things by interacting with the material, but there are things like holes where things fall through the cracks. When I come into contact with something undifferentiated, where energies are held in tension with each other, it strikes me that this is what was missing. I’m always aware of issues related to social structures — especially pertaining to the concept of information.

──With your recent work, it feels as though you are deliberately rejecting imagery, or at least steering away from engaging with it at all. It seems like the only elements that still carry a faint sense of representation are those sculptural protrusions made by mixing medium. Is this a conscious choice on your part, or a specific direction you are actively pursuing? For instance, in your past works depicting mountains, there was still a faint yet legible silhouette of a mountain.

Aoki When I draw mountains, I approach the task in two main ways. One is seeing the mountain as the sum total of the knowledge or intelligence that the natural world possesses. The other is when I draw the mouth of a volcano — I think of this as nothingness. Being and non-being exist there at the same time. One of the properties of information is that it establishes meaning. I want to keep meaning from being firmly established.

──This exhibition marks your eighth solo exhibition at KOSAKU KANECHIKA. It feels like you are steadily progressing, introducing new developments with each exhibition. Looking ahead, how do you see your practice evolving? Do you have a specific direction or target in mind? For instance, do you see yourself continuing to layer on further dimensions — from four to five, to six? Or has creating and presenting this body of work sparked any new revelations for you?

Aoki My canvases keep pace with time. I’ve been creating art with a focus on various relationships of force in order to make that happen. The paint came to take on a sculptural structure, and, as if in response to that, holes ended up being opened in the spray cans. As I uncover incongruities, I consider what needs to be sorted out and what should continue to be retained, and build things up accordingly.

──t’s very clear that you are exploring, through a truly distinct approach, what still remains possible in the realm of painterly expression. I look forward to seeing where your work goes next, as you continue to boldly feel your way forward, one step at a time, along this challenging, steep and narrow path.