June 23, 2026, Kyoto – Sokyo Gallery (Furumonzen-dori) is pleased to present The White. This is the second exhibition in this series, following The White held at Sokyo Annex in 2021.
The exhibition is conceived on the basis of The White Book by Han Kang, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature.
In the book, the figure of the author’s older sister, who died only two hours after birth, gives rise to a fundamental question about the author’s own existence: had her sister lived, would she herself ever have been born? Warsaw, Poland, where the author lived for a time, is portrayed as a city destroyed by war and yet reborn, and its history is layered onto the book’s theme of white. Like shattered rubble that gleams white, life in these pages bears tragedy and loss yet moves quietly toward renewal, with a resilience rendered in tranquil, luminous prose.
In addition to works from the gallery’s collection by Lee Ufan, Kazunori Hamana, Akiko Horio, and Taizo Kuroda, the exhibition features works by Tetsuya Otani, Shizuka Okada, Miki Komatsu, Saki Chikaraishi, Takayuki Daikoku, and Wataru Hatano.
White burial garments, the white of mourning, bones, ash, swaddling clothes, white breath in the cold air, white teeth, white rice: our lives are filled with white things. White is also a color that encompasses many meanings: life and death, loss and renewal, purification and hope.
Taking these symbolic associations with white as a point of departure, the exhibition invites quiet reflection on the workings of our lives. In an era marked by seemingly endless war and pervasive anxiety, we hope it will offer an opportunity to think anew about the preciousness of life and hope for the future.
Tetsuya Otani’s vessels give form to the spiritual quality that white assumes during fleeting everyday moments. Connecting food with the rhythms of daily life, his works gently evoke the fundamental realities of life and death.
Taizo Kuroda’s white porcelain works are defined by thin, taut contours pared down to the utmost limit and by the soft ridges of the potter’s wheel that remain on their surfaces. Their serene forms give each work a distinct presence, giving shape to sensations that cannot be fully grasped in words.
Kazunori Hamana lives in a secluded corner of the Boso Peninsula, dividing his time between farming and ceramics. In spring he plants rice without agricultural chemicals while listening to the songs of small birds, and in his pottery practice he creates jars that are almost like self-portraits. Since antiquity, seed jars have protected seeds and served as vessels that carry life into the future. Hamana’s jars, born of his sustained attention to the cycle of life, subtly question a contemporary society that gives priority to mass consumption and the pursuit of profit.
Lee Ufan’s works were fabricated in Sèvres, France, in French porcelain of exceptional whiteness, and explore the theme of “destruction and construction.” Their white, which conveys both loss and renewal, resonates deeply with the theme of this exhibition.
As part of the gallery’s environmental efforts in recent years, the participating artists have been asked to work, wherever possible, in materials with low environmental impact.
Takayuki Daikoku, in particular, painted with gofun, a traditional white pigment made from ground shell, in place of acrylic, and used only naturally derived materials such as animal glue and shellac varnish as binders.
Through this exhibition, we aim to explore sustainable forms of art-making, in the hope that the art that enriches our lives does not damage the environment or diminish the futures of the generations to come.
