Open

Friday, May 29 – Sunday, June 28, 2026
13:00-19:00
Wednesday – Saturday, last Sunday

CALM & PUNK GALLERY is pleased to present U魚, a solo exhibition by Muku Kobayashi.
Kobayashi has continuously produced kinetic works that repeat purposeless movements. This exhibition centers on a new series of “non-moving” works, created from unidentified machines and devices collected from recycle shops and internet auctions, whose original functions remain unknown. Without significantly altering their internal structures or foundations, Kobayashi transfers these objects into self-made containers.
This marks the first time Kobayashi has introduced the term “sculpture” into his practice, while also newly foregrounding the sculptural dimension of his practice.
Machines are originally created with specific purposes, existing within what Martin Heidegger described as a network of instrumental relations, in which they are used “for something.” Yet these devices, whose functions and origins have become unknown, have drifted outside of such relations, suspended as mechanisms rendered useless.

Detached from networks of purpose, these machines retain the potential for operation while no longer serving any practical role. Kobayashi encloses and conceals them within containers. This gesture itself becomes sculpture as a “technology of concealment.”
Within these works, the positional relationships of the circuit boards and the lengths of their wiring determine the form of the container — the sculpture — from the inside outward. Once dismantled and disassembled, the circuit boards and wires are carefully reconnected, preserving their operational capacities while sealing them away.
Yet the purposes they once served have already vanished, and the sculptures appear almost like graves for these machines. They are materials returned to uselessness, while simultaneously remaining vessels that still contain latent possibilities of use.
Although Kobayashi collects machines and devices on the verge of disposal, he does not approach them through the frameworks of sustainability or reuse. Instead, he presents them as interfaces — “sculptures” — through which new forms of speculation and relationality may emerge.

The exhibition title U魚 suggests an ambiguous contour that resists being subsumed into any fixed meaning or function. It evokes a state in which machines, liberated from purpose, continue to drift — an indeterminate space just before relationships begin to take form.
The sculptures presented in this exhibition quietly confront viewers with tensions between interior and exterior, function and form, visibility and invisibility, while posing subtle questions about their modes of existence. We warmly invite you to experience the exhibition.