Ito kai

Shuhei Ise

Seiichiro

KozaRyo Ozeki

Norihiro Nakajima

Gallery 10[TOH]Daiichi Silver Building 1F5-20-11 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo

September 12 (Fri) – September 28 (Sun), 2025　

Closed Monday and Tuesday

Hours: 1:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Ito-kai is a project by four artists who, for over ten years, have engaged in ongoing conversations about painting, viewed each other’s works, and held exhibitions together. In 2023, they were selected for the “Tobi Selection” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, and earlier this year they also presented an exhibition at CADAN Yurakucho.

Their relationship has extended beyond the temporary framework of exhibitions, sustained and renewed through painting as a centripetal force. Within their individual practices, resonances and resistances alike have arisen, generating an organic interconnectedness. While each artist’s methods and ways of thinking differ, they share certain commonalities: a refusal to emphasize social or narrative elements, and an approach that proceeds improvisationally without clear plans or preparatory drawings.

In their work, each artist must, in a sense, descend into a place of unknowing. Rather than forcibly imposing intention onto an unfinished painting, they approach it through dialogue. With every mark, unexpected changes emerge, which in turn compel unexpected responses. Through this process, painting and painter gradually merge, until the act of painting itself feels as though it is being carried out both consciously and beyond the artist’s will.

The works born from these woven, step-by-step exchanges remain fresh even to their makers—paintings that become the very ones they themselves had wished to see.