UPCOMING ART FAIR
EXPO CHICAGO
Booth 125
April 24 – 27, 2025
Opening Night: Thursday, April 24, 5-8pm
Fair Hours: Thursday, 12-5pm (by invitation only); Friday and Saturday, 11am-7pm; Sunday, 11am-6pm
Navy Pier Festival Hall, 600 E Grand Ave, Chicago
We are pleased to be participating in EXPO CHICAGO 2025 this year, presenting a group exhibition featuring works by Hiroyoshi Asaka, Toshiyuki Kajioka, and Danielle Winger at Booth 125. Each artist demonstrates extraordinary dedication to their chosen medium and subject, creating immersive encounters that invite viewers to contemplate time, process, and transcendence.
Hiroyoshi Asaka (b. 1977, Osaka, Japan) meticulously hand-carves marble – his sole chosen material – into uncanny sculptures resembling Styrofoam objects. By transforming a medium historically synonymous with permanence, power, and prestige into what appears as its disposable antithesis, Asaka creates a compelling dialogue between the monumental and the mundane. His KASHOUMON series prompts deeper questions about value, labor, and time.
Asaka’s works were exhibited at EXPO CHICAGO 2024, Art Miami 2024 and other international venues. At SEIZAN Gallery, he has been featured in ROCK, PAPER, SALT (2024, New York) and The Truth of Illusions (2024, Tokyo). His works are included in major public collections such as Osaka City, Oharayama Shrine (Fukuoka, Japan), and Fujitsu Karuizawa-sou (Nagano, Japan). He lives and works in Osaka, Japan.
Toshiyuki Kajioka (b. 1978, Tokyo, Japan) has devoted the past twenty years to painting a single subject: the surface of flowing rivers at night. Using only sumi ink and graphite pencil on Japanese paper, Kajioka captures water’s shifting states between wildness and tranquility, transforming fleeting moments into timeless, immersive experiences. For EXPO CHICAGO, Kajioka will present a monumental work from his signature “Waterscape” series.
Kajioka’s recent presentations include EXPO CHICAGO 2024, Unconscious River (SEIZAN Gallery New York, 2023) and Edge of Night (SEIZAN Gallery Tokyo, 2021). His works are in the permanent collections of Toyohashi City Museum of Art & History, Kyoto University of the Arts, and Aizu Museum in Tokyo. He lives and works in Shiga, Japan.
Danielle Winger (b. 1986, Nevada, USA) creates contemplative landscapes with bold brushstrokes and striking colors that evoke both physical places and emotional states. Drawing inspiration from German Romantic traditions, she approaches landscape as both subject and metaphor—where mountains become paths to transcendence, deserts embody profound solitude, and moonlit forests take on human qualities. Her deeply personal meditative spaces invite viewers to explore themes of sublimity and the divine.
Winger’s works have been shown at König Bergson in Munich (2025), Lamb Gallery in London (2024), and Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville (2021, 2023). At SEIZAN Gallery, she has exhibited in The Shape of Water (2024, Tokyo) and participated in Art Taipei (2024) and Art Tokyo (2024). Her work has been published in ArtMaze Magazine and New American Paintings Midwest #173 (2024). She lives and works in La Fontaine, Indiana.
To view our online viewing room, click here.
To learn more about the fair, click here.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Artist Focus: Aya Fujioka and Alexa Hoyer
We are pleased to present the works of two visionary female photographers, Aya Fujioka and Alexa Hoyer. Signature series by both artists are currently on view in our gallery’s project space, offering distinct yet complementary perspectives on place, memory, and overlooked narratives.
Aya Fujioka is a quiet master of capturing the everyday. Her work bypasses the pursuit of a single “decisive moment,” instead embracing a succession of peripheral, intimate scenes. These seemingly mundane images form subtle narratives, either revealing a relationship between artist and subject or liberating the subject from traditional storytelling. Fujioka’s approach is deeply rooted in Japan’s “Shashinshu” tradition—a form of photobook regarded not as a supplement to an exhibition but as an art object in its own right. In contrast to Western photobooks, often treated as catalogs or archival records, the Japanese Shashinshu is a storytelling medium where meaning is built through a sequence of images. Fujioka has published several of these with AKAAKA, a leading Japanese art publisher specializing in this genre.
On view is Here Goes River, Fujioka’s career-defining series and the recipient of the prestigious Kimura Ihei Photography Award in 2018. Set in the delta region of her hometown, Hiroshima, the series uses quiet, reflective imagery to explore themes of trauma, resilience, and the passage of time—traces of the city’s past gently echoing through its present.
Alexa Hoyer is a visual artist and curator whose photographic projects explore overlooked or ephemeral aspects of both urban and rural environments, capturing unexpected narratives found in public and often unconventional spaces. Based in New York City, Hoyer has explored a wide range of subjects—from handmade window displays in Havana (Montaje al Aire), to boarded-up storefronts during Manhattan’s COVID-19 lockdown (Window Dressing), to the curious emptiness of Queens’ tree beds (Fallow Frames). These projects often involve local communities and highlight the interplay between improvisation, identity, and environment.
In Montaje al Aire, Hoyer collaborated with three decorators responsible for window displays in Havana, showcasing their creative ingenuity despite scarce resources. Fallow Frames evolved into a local biennial, transforming empty tree beds into unconventional exhibition sites for neighborhood artists. Across all her projects, Hoyer frames these unassuming subjects with humor, sensitivity, and a deep awareness of their social context.
On view is Targets, a striking series featuring makeshift gun targets left behind in the Nevada desert. At unregulated shooting sites near Las Vegas, everyday objects—wooden cutouts, plastic containers, old signs—are transformed into bullet-riddled relics. Hoyer’s images highlight the eerie beauty, absurdity, and tension embedded in these discarded artifacts.
To learn more, click here.
ONGOING ASIA WEEK NEW YORK EXHIBITION
Takashi Seto: Moments of Arrival
March 6 – May 3, 2025
Opening reception with Artist: Thursday, March 13, 6-8 pm
Asia Week Hours: March 13-15 & 18-21, 11am-6pm; March 16-17, by appointment
During Asia Week New York, we are pleased to present Takashi Seto: Moments of Arrival, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York, on view from March 6 through May 3, 2025. Showcasing fifteen recent works on canvas, the exhibition highlights Seto’s mastery of Yuzen fabric dyeing and Shippaku metal leaf techniques — the traditional craft methods he revives and reinterprets. Through this intricate process, Seto explores cultural heritage, symbolism, and the passage of time, transforming ephemeral materials into meditative, multi-layered works.
Artist, craftsman, and researcher, Takashi Seto studies 18th-century Yuzen textbooks and revives forgotten techniques, expanding them into new artistic expressions. His labor-intensive process includes hand-drawn rice paste resist lines, applied with a cone-shaped tube onto translucent silk. This meticulous method produces intricate details and layered dye applications. The silk is then stretched over a silver-leaf-covered canvas, affixed with urushi—a natural lacquer—in the traditional Shippaku technique historically used for Buddha statues and fine dishware. As the silver surface oxidizes it transforms the artwork’s appearance, creating an evolving dialogue between material and time. Seto’s layered compositions result in tranquil yet complex surfaces that invite contemplation and visual engagement.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is the four-panel work Personality Poison (2023), Seto’s homage to Yuzen’s history and the artisans who have preserved its traditions. The work features Murasakitsuyukusa (Tradescantia), a flower historically used to extract blue ink for fabric outlines. Though synthetic alternatives exist, Seto insists on using the natural plant-based ink, sourced from a 90-year-old craftsman and the very last person still producing it. Ironically, the ink is ultimately washed away during the dyeing process. Alongside the ephemeral flower, Seto paints a vividly colored Poison Dart Frog. The creature is renown for its toxicity, which is not inherent but is a cumulative result of its diet over time. Seto playfully depicts the frog with five toes instead of four, subtly anthropomorphizing it and inviting deeper reflection on adaptation and identity.
A paired work, Ah/Un: Ah (2024) and Ah/Un: Un (2024), references the symbolic guardian statues found at Japanese temples and shrines. These figures traditionally represent the sounds “Ah” (the beginning) and “Un” (the end), encapsulating the cycle of existence. In Ah/Un: Ah, a gecko—its mouth forming the “Ah” shape—appears alongside a directional traffic sign pointing forward. In Ah/Un: Un, a five-toed frog echoes the “Un” shape, suggesting completion. By juxtaposing everyday urban symbols with traditional iconography, Seto questions the nature of rules, boundaries, and the constructed systems that shape human perception. “What does it mean to follow a rule? How do we move beyond it? What happens when we step outside human-made symbols? What does it mean to exist in the present moment?”
Through his fusion of historical craft and contemporary themes, Seto challenges conventions and honors tradition, while navigating a delicate balance between preservation and transformation.
To learn more, click here.
About the Gallery
Since its founding in Tokyo in 1996, Seizan Gallery has represented artists who work in a variety of media and styles. Based in Ginza, in the heart of culture and luxury business in Tokyo, Seizan represents nearly fifty contemporary artists as well as the estates of modern masters. After inaugurating its first overseas exhibition space in 2018, in Chelsea, NYC, the gallery has presented the work of artists who produce artworks with universal aesthetic appeal yet possess a strong connection to traditional roots. Such artists include Yasuko Hasumura, Kengo Takahashi, Emi Katsuta, Toko Shinoda, Toshiyuki Kajioka, and Yasushi Ikejiri. Located in vibrant cultural centers in both East and West, Seizan Gallery works with emerging artists to fulfill their vision and potential to contribute to the art world.