Pola Museum Annex to Present Akiko Ueda, Gentaro Ishizuka, and Keita Morimoto in “Worlding − No Oars, No Shore,”

Pola Museum Annex in Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, will present the group exhibition “Worlding − No Oars, No Shore,” featuring Akiko Ueda, Gentaro Ishizuka, and Keita Morimoto, from Friday, June 12 to Sunday, July 5, 2026. Taking the question “How does a world come into being?” as its point of departure, the exhibition brings together three artists who approach the theme through distinct methods. Ueda uses shifts in color and form to depict the process by which images nearly emerge and then collapse, as well as the instant in which an event is born. Ishizuka, working from a foundation in photography, expands his treatment of light and material to suggest sensations of overlapping time and space. Morimoto, while referencing classical painting, depicts everyday urban scenes and uses “light” as a clue to layer contemporary reality with historical depth, questioning the nature of seeing and recognition. In the gallery, three worlds of different character are placed side by side without being directly connected. Yet by experiencing them simultaneously, viewers may discover new relationships and ways of seeing within themselves. Like a single cord swaying, spreading like a wave, and folding over itself to create countless pleats, each fold reveals a different world. The exhibition focuses on this movement and presents a form of the world that never settles into one fixed state, but continues to waver and transform. Exhibition overview: Title: Akiko Ueda, Gentaro Ishizuka, Keita Morimoto “Worlding − No Oars, No Shore,” Dates: June 12, 2026 (Fri) – July 5, 2026 (Sun), open every day during the exhibition period Hours: 11:00–19:00, last admission at 18:30 Admission: Free Venue: Pola Museum Annex, 3F Pola Ginza Building, 1-7-7 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0061 Official website: http://www.po-holdings.co.jp/m-annex/ Organizer: Pola Orbis Holdings Inc. Cooperation: KOTARO NUKAGA Akiko Ueda was born in Kyoto in 1983. She graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at Musashino Art University in 2006, completed a master’s program in painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Brussels in 2020, and completed lithography studies at the same academy in 2023. Rather than treating painting as a means of mere reproduction or representation, Ueda pursues it as a way to express the processes, moments, and developments through which phenomena change and transform. Her work has drawn attention from early on: she received the Tamayo Iemura Juror’s Prize at the Shell Art Award in 2009 and the Ohara Museum of Art Prize at VOCA in 2011. In 2018, she studied in Belgium as an overseas trainee of the Pola Art Foundation, and has since expanded her practice internationally, including solo exhibitions in Belgium and Shanghai. Gentaro Ishizuka was born in Tokyo in 1977. He received the Newcomer’s Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 2004 and was selected as an overseas artist trainee by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2011. His early work crossed documentary and art practices, culminating in the photobook “PIPELINE ICELAND / ALASKA,” published by Kodansha, which won the 2014 Higashikawa New Photographer Award. In 2016, he received the Grand Prix at the Steidl Book Award Japan, leading to the publication of “GOLD RUSH ALASKA” by Steidl in Germany. In recent years, Ishizuka has explored a reinterpretation of spatiality in photographic expression in the SNS era through three-dimensional works using darkroom-exposed photographic paper and mosaic-like works woven from multiple layers of photographic paper. Keita Morimoto was born in Osaka in 1990. He moved to Canada in 2006 and graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design, now OCAD University, in 2012. After working in Canada, he returned to Japan in 2021 and is currently based in Tokyo. Deeply interested in the techniques and themes of Baroque painting, early twentieth-century American Realism, and classical genre painting, Morimoto references these traditions to transform ordinary scenes of contemporary urban life into distinctive narratives. By symbolically depicting light, he fuses its sacred and universal qualities with the stark realities of consumer culture, creating works in which historical depth resonates with contemporary complexity. In 2025, he held the solo exhibition “what has escaped us” at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. His work has also been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, K11 MUSEA, Powerlong Museum, Art Gallery of Peterborough, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.