IBASHO is proud to present HAZAMA, the second solo exhibition by Japanese visual artist Naoyuki Ogino (1975). The Japanese word hazama means "in-between"—not things themselves, but the threshold where they meet. This notion of a third space has been the central theme of Ogino's artistic practice for many years and is explored in the three series presented in this exhibition: Penumbras Everywhere, Interwork GOJO and Skin.
In Penumbras Everywhere, Ogino reflects on the penumbra: neither light nor shadow, but the space where they overlap. During the 2024 Venice Biennale, he photographed the overlapping shadows cast by artworks and visitors. These fleeting penumbras gradually formed abstract, otherworldly landscapes that reminded him of a shifting Terre des hommes—a metaphor for today's multipolar world, where cultures, identities and stories intersect. For Ogino, these images become visual meditations on transformation, uncertainty and the myths that emerge from living in-between.
The idea of inhabiting another's perspective is central to Interwork GOJO. Created for an exhibition in Kyoto earlier this year, the project brought Ogino together with ceramic artists Hiroaki Kiyomizu, Shinya Taniguchi and Akira Matsuda. Each artist crossed into the discipline of another, exchanging roles and methods as part of the creative process. Ogino produced ceramic works using each artist's clay and glazes, while the ceramicists completed the firing according to his intentions. The resulting works challenge conventional ideas of authorship and reveal the creative potential that exists between artistic disciplines.
The exhibition also includes Skin, a series of richly textured salt prints that explore the presence and materiality of the female body. Through surfaces that evoke both touch and landscape, Ogino creates images that exist between feeling and touch, body and nature, reality and myth. Skin becomes our first means of sensing, connecting and recognising ourselves and others. At once deeply personal and detached from the individual, these anonymous, landscape-like forms invite viewers to reflect on the body as a universal site of memory, connection and transformation. Complementing this series are small salt prints from Ogino's Womb series, which further evoke the female body as an intimate, mythical landscape.
Artists: Naoyuki Ogino
