Keisuke Yamamoto: Cultivating a Poem Lost to Memory
Installation view of Cultivating a Poem Lost to Memory, September 13 - October 11, 2025, Tomio Koyama Gallery Photo by Kenji Takahashi ©Keisuke Yamamoto, Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery
Tomio Koyama Gallery Roppongi is pleased to present an exhibition by Keisuke Yamamoto entitled “Cultivating a Poem Lost to Memory.” This exhibition marks the artist’s eighth solo show at the gallery and his first in eight years, featuring new sculptures and drawings.
【About Keisuke Yamamoto and his work: expressing chaos, the multilayered nature of soil, and underground worlds through a versatile imagination】
Keisuke Yamamoto (b. 1979) graduated from the sculpture department of Tokyo Zokei University in 2001 and completed his Master’s degree in sculpture at the Graduate School of Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2018. He currently serves as Associate Professor in the Concentration in Sculpture at Joshibi University of Art and Design.
Yamamoto has expressed his artistic world through both sculpture and painting. One of the most distinctive features of his practice is his affinity for soil and subterranean realms. He has connected his unique imagination to a sense of faith in and reverence for the land, the time and history embodied in layers of earth, nutrients and microorganisms, lifelines, chemical artifacts, and the chaotic darkness, presenting them as forms of existence that are free and unencumbered.
山本桂輔 Keisuke Yamamoto夢遊する樹 The Sleepwalking Tree2016/2022/2025Wood, oil paint, stone, glass木、油彩、石、ガラスh.265.5 x w.73.0 x d.82.0 cm Photo by Kenji Takahashi ©Keisuke Yamamoto, Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery
While this underlying philosophy remains constant, the direction of his work has evolved as his interests have shifted. His early representative series “Untitled” (2008-2012) features massive wooden sculptures more than five meters high that brim with an overflowing sense of vitality and rhythm. For his 2012 solo exhibition, Yamamoto created works rich in vernacular elements — an attempt to breathe new life into old tools and implements that seem to have always been there, through a form of coexistence.
山本桂輔 Keisuke Yamamoto 甘い光 Sweet Light “Cultivating a Poem2024wood, oil paint, wire木、油彩、ワイヤーh.34.7 x w.26.5 x d.24.5 cm／including the wire: h.84.0 Photo by Kenji Takahashi ©Keisuke Yamamoto, Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery
For this exhibition, building on the momentum from his participation in the 2024 Yamagata Biennale, Yamamoto will present new works that function like tools, stages, or board games with no rules. These pieces draw upon and cultivate the energy, history, and stories that reside in the earth and its depths through images of tree roots. Additionally, his outdoor bronze installation Talking and Singing in Sleep is currently on display at Marunouchi Street Gallery.
【About this exhibition and the works on display: images of accumulation, slumber, and dreams generated through trees that connect the subterranean realm with the earth and sky】
Installation view of Cultivating a Poem Lost to Memory, September 13 - October 11, 2025, Tomio Koyama Gallery Photo by Kenji Takahashi ©Keisuke Yamamoto, Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery
On the occasion of this exhibition, Yamamoto penned the following statement.
“I am interested not in art as a special act performed by special individuals, but rather the ordinary, natural acts of imagining, thinking, and making things that humanity has engaged in since time immemorial. It is these acts that I feel are evidence of humanity’s attempts to understand this world, through an infinite number of forms conjured by individuals over the course of their relationship with the world. One way to describe them is as tiny whispers or mutterings that have been overlooked by grand historical narratives.”
“Countless lives exist beneath the earth, and the history of billions of years of activity is inscribed therein — an infinite number of nameless things, events, thoughts, and wishes. The underground feels like a world where everything melts together and coexists.”
“Trees connect the underground to the earth and sky, and images are generated through these connections. Various things frolic, accumulate, and gradually take shape.”
In Garden of Hot Springs, part of Yamamoto’s “Cultivating a Poem Lost to Memory” series, human-like figures and spheres lie scattered and suspended across what appears to be a cross-section of a log inundated by water, while abstract, painterly circles are also depicted along the sides.
山本桂輔 Keisuke Yamamoto 手品、プールの底の種 Magic, the Seed at the Bottom of the Pool 2024 wood, oil paint, stones, strings, metal fittings, paper, color pencil木、油彩、石、紐、金具、紙、鉛筆h.62.0 x w.33.0 x d.32.1 cm Photo by Kenji Takahashi ©Keisuke Yamamoto, Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery
Are these people from the past that the earth has witnessed, non-existent people from dreams, or something from the future? These spheres resemble stones, stars, eyes, seeds, flowers, or light, yet they also seem like minute particles. Through the trees, organic beings appear in an imaginative and abstract manner, evoking in the viewer images of distant life, cosmic forces, and a sense of drifting between dream and reality.
山本桂輔 Keisuke Yamamoto 熱水泉の庭 Garden of Hot Springs “Cultivating a Poem 2024 wood, oil paint, stones, glass, ceramic, strings, metal fittings木、油彩、石、ガラス、セラミック、紐、金具 h.90.7 x w.40.0 x d.33.0 cm Photo by Kenji Takahashi ©Keisuke Yamamoto, Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery
Also on display are works from Yamamoto’s “Zao Notebook” series — pencil drawings created while strolling in the area around Mount Zao, in which he sketches the forms he sees with curved, undulating lines, to which he adds details later, as if recalling them after forgetting — as well as pieces from his “Gently Scooping” series. This latter series represents Yamamoto’s attempts to expand on the image of rock fragments that become pebbles as a result of the flow of a river, using cups and spheres to express the distortion and rotational movement of the world through the random reflections of light in glass.
山本桂輔 Keisuke Yamamoto 地底の星屑(微光流星の花) 2025 wood, oil paint, ceramic, iron, lead, stone, thread木、油彩、セラミック、鉄、鉛、石、糸h.42.0 x w.28.3 x d.6 cm Photo by Kenji Takahashi ©Keisuke Yamamoto, Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery
With a perspective that is gentle yet sharp, Yamamoto softly scoops up and creates an infinite number of forgotten, nameless things, thoughts, and wishes, and his artistic practice that transcends time and space continues to grow ever more profound. We hope you will take the opportunity to experience the most recent iteration of his artistic world.
Cultivating a Poem to Memory opened on September 13, with an opening reception on September 13, from 5-7pm The exhibition will close on October 11, 2025. The TOMIO KOYAMA GALLERY ROPPONGI is open from 11 am to 7 pm. It is CLOSED: Sun, Mon, and National Holidays.
For more information about this exhibition at TOMIO KOYAMA GALLERY ROPPONGI and others, please visit their site here. The gallery can be found on X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. For more information on the artist, please visit here.
-
