ASIA WEEK NEW YORK EXHIBITION CLOSING SOON
Takashi Seto: Moments of Arrival
March 6 – May 3, 2025
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.
CURRENT EXHIBITION
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.
RECENT 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.
To view our online viewing room, click here.
To learn more about the fair, click here.
UPCOMING EVENT AND EXHIBITIONS
NEW YORK THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE: Paul Auster and Saul Leite
Wednesday, May 7, 2025 at 6pm
Exhibition: May 7 – 17, 2025
Featuring:
Margit Erb – Director, Saul Leiter Foundation
Michael Parillo – Director, Saul Leiter Foundation
Siri Hustvedt – Writer
Sam Messer – Artist
Motoyuki Shibata – English-to-Japanese Translator, Writer
Pauline Vermare – Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum
The gallery also invites you to a special evening honoring Paul Auster and Saul Leiter—two artists who reimagined New York City in deeply personal ways through their work on Wednesday, May 7.
In commemoration of the first anniversary of Paul Auster’s passing, they welcome a distinguished group of speakers—close collaborators and longtime friends of the acclaimed writer: Siri Hustvedt, author and Auster’s partner; Sam Messer, celebrated painter and longtime friend; and Motoyuki Shibata, renowned translator of most of Auster’s titles in Japanese.
Though Paul Auster and Saul Leiter never met—Leiter having been born 25 years earlier—their words and images seem to echo each other. They were combined in the publication It Don’t Mean a Thing (The Gould Collection) in 2017. Both artists have built enduring communities of admirers, not only in New York but around the world, particularly in France and in Japan. Joining the conversation are Margit Erb and Michael Parillo of the Saul Leiter Foundation, along with Pauline Vermare of the Brooklyn Museum. Together, they will discuss the connections and resonances between the writer and the photographer.
The talk will be accompanied by an exhibition featuring selected prints by Saul Leiter, paintings and prints by Sam Messer, and portraits of Auster by the photographer Spencer Ostrander, Auster son-in-law. Together, they had collaborated on an acclaimed publication focusing on gun violence in America: Bloodbath Nation. (Grove Press, 2023). The exhibition will be on view from May 7 through May 17.
Copies of The Gould Collection Volume 2: Saul Leiter & Paul Auster (reprint edition) and recent issues of MONKEY New Writing from Japan will be available for purchase at the event.
To learn more, click here.
KEIKO ARAI: INKSCAPE
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 8 from 6-8pm
May 8 – June 21, 2025
Also be sure to mark your calendar for their upcoming exhibition, KEIKO ARAI: INKSCAPE, on view from May 8 through June 21. This marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States and features a wide-ranging survey of works created using a single pigment—sumi ink—on washi paper. Through experimental techniques that challenge traditional practices, Arai reshapes sumi ink painting, a practice with roots stretching back over a thousand years in East Asian art history, while exploring the expressive possibilities of monochromatic abstraction.
The exhibition features over twenty-two works from Arai’s ongoing series, including Zone and Now and Then. Zone presents contemplative yet playful abstractions, composed of biomorphic shapes that resemble organelles seen through a microscope or fragments of satellite images capturing isolated islands adrift in the ocean. While traditional sumi ink art is often defined by bold brushstrokes that express spontaneity and momentum, Arai takes a contrasting approach in this series. She begins by wetting washi paper with sumi ink, then masks selected areas using cutouts of various materials. This method slows the drying process—sometimes taking an entire day—resulting in forms with organic contours and rich, unpredictable textures. Through this repetitive and immersive process, Arai creates ink fields that are deeply personal and visually distinctive.
The exhibition also includes a series of paintings in which Arai combines sumi ink with unconventional organic materials—such as exhausted indigo dye to create brown hues, and bronze patina for green tones. Another series features sculptural works, where she constructs washi paper in dimensional forms mounted on traditional scrolls.
They look forward to welcoming you the opening reception soon!
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.