PAST EXHIBITION
Yuki Anai Solo Exhibition
"Nature is a medium"
- Open
2025/6/20 (Friday) – 6/29(Sunday)
13:00-19:00
Wednesday – Saturday, last Sunday
CALM & PUNK GALLERY is pleased to present Nature Is a Medium, a solo exhibition by media artist Yuki Anai, on view from Friday, June 20 to Sunday, June 29, 2025.
Anai previously participated in the 2012 sound installation on the ground – invisible inaudible at our gallery, a collaborative work with musician Hideaki Takahashi and Uwe Haas. This exhibition marks his first solo presentation built entirely around his own conceptual vision.
During that earlier exhibition, Anai explored the sensory perception of the “invisible” and the “inaudible.” Since then, he has continued to develop works in Japan and abroad, focusing on the evolving relationship between nature and technology.
In recent years, Anai has presented works incorporating light and sound across Europe and Asia, including invited exhibitions in cities such as Plzeň, Czech Republic, and Athens, Greece. In 2018, he participated in Ars Electronica—one of the world’s largest media art festivals—in Linz, Austria. In 2024, he unveiled in the rain at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
Confronting the ways in which cultural, climatic, and religious differences shape our sensitivity to light and nature, Anai continues to explore and reexamine the relationship between artwork and viewer experience. In Japan, his commitment to expression extends to commissioned works as well—most notably, with a permanent installation created for the office entrance of Azabudai Hills.
In this exhibition, Anai revisits questions surrounding nature, memory, and the presence of energy through his new 2022 series, enérgeia.
This work is an installation using surround speakers and illuminated bars—linear LED light devices—where programmed flashes and movements of light, together with changes in sound phase and spatial effects, evoke the presence of invisible “energy” as sensations of light and sound. The installation’s spatially arranged LED bars create a dynamic structure, and by minimizing elements and functions, the space itself emerges as a medium of perception.
Visual complementarities and dissonances, along with contrasts of light and shadow, unfold throughout the space. Within this environment, viewers quietly tap into the depths of memory and sensation, as the boundaries between inside and outside, self and world, gently dissolve.
Sound production for the exhibition is led by musician and media artist Hideaki Takahashi, who continues to explore spatial experience through auditory perception. In 2012, Takahashi presented a sound installation based on his original concept at our gallery. In this exhibition, he and Anai once again join forces to pursue a new form of expression where sound and light intersect.
Anai has consistently chosen to describe his work not through abstract art terminology, but through words like “phenomenon” and “function.” This reflects a stance that values not technological achievement, but the quality of the experience unfolding before the viewer. His approach also signals a deliberate orientation toward abstract, emotional realms—distinct from the increasingly high-resolution, hyper-detailed expressions of today’s technology-based art.
We warmly invite you to witness the new landscapes that emerge in the delicate interstice between city and nature, memory and technology.
Artist Statement
Through nature, I reflect on my memories of it—and of myself within it. In sensing the vast flow of time held within the natural world, I come to affirm the life I have lived so far, and the life I will continue to live. Nature exists simply as it is. Yet, its presence alone carries a message. How that message is interpreted differs from person to person. Many people, for example, have memories evoked by rain falling from the sky, the blazing summer sun, or the rippling patterns of waves on the sea’s surface. When we encounter these scenes again, they function like interactive media, vividly reawakening past memories. In this way, even though nature merely exists, it can be said to act as a medium—one that holds a message for each of us. I am deeply interested in how the rich expressions of nature give rise to meaning and become embedded in people’s memories. To feel nature, to sense one’s own memories within it, and to connect to its vast temporal flow—is to affirm oneself. It is to embrace not only the life one has lived, but also the vast time still to come. In a world where so many of our everyday certainties shift without a sound, this act becomes a way of rediscovering the self that undoubtedly exists here, in this moment.
−Yuki Anai
Yuki Anai
Yuki Anai is a media artist born in Oita Prefecture. He holds a graduate degree from Keio University’s Graduate School of Media Design. Centered around the concept that “nature is a medium,” Anai uses cutting-edge technologies of light and sound to express the diverse aspects and messages of nature through media art. He has exhibited internationally at renowned media art festivals and exhibitions such as the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, Austria), Athens Digital Arts Festival (Athens, Greece), the 2024 International Techno Art Exhibition: Right Where It Belongs at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and the Nakanojo Biennale (Gunma Prefecture, Japan), among others.
Photo：Ayako Sasaki
Hideaki Takahashi (高橋英明), Musician
Graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts (Composition). Released numerous albums as mjuc and hideaki takahashi. Known for media art works like hour blink and 3.11-themed pieces on the ground and The Hole. Collaborated on teamLab projects including Borderless and Planets. His Ghost in the Shell VR won Best of VR at Venice Film Festival. Composed music for Tokyo Olympic Ainu dance and the 2024 Tokyo concerto projection mapping.
