May 20 (Tue) – June 15 (Sun), 2025
Opening hours: 11:00-19:00 (last entry 18:45)
Closed: Mondays
＜Exhibition Outline＞
In 2025, KUBOTAOGUISS Tomohiro will reconstruct his 2017 graduation work, Temporary List of the Wastes.
This work is a time-specific installation that involves the selection and arrangement of personal and familial belongings accumulated in his living space, as well as his past artworks, utilizing the exhibition space as a device for reconfiguring one’s living environment.
Through a reenactment of the overlapping processes of daily life and artistic production, the exhibition explores actions surrounding “R = Reuse, Reposition, Reconstruct…” By doing so, it raises questions about how the by-products of an artist’s practice are left behind, and invites viewers to consider their dual nature as both assets and liabilities.
＜Artist’s Statement＞
This exhibition marks the first reenactment in approximately eight years of “Temporary List of the Wastes”, a graduation work originally presented in 2017 by KUBOTAOGUISS Tomohiro.
The original installation brought personal and familial belongings, as well as past artworks accumulated in the artist’s living space, into the exhibition venue. Through their selection and arrangement, the work overlapped the acts of tidying one’s living environment and artistic creation. By utilizing the format of an exhibition, it presented the practical act of “cleaning up” as a form of artistic expression intertwined with time and space.
This new iteration is carried out in light of changes in the artist’s living environment, offering an opportunity to re-engage with the same set of concerns from a renewed perspective.
The exhibition title, [5/?くらいのR / R: 5 out of ?], symbolizes this very incompleteness and provisionality.
The exhibition seeks to reflect on how artworks and artistic productions are preserved—or not—over time. It questions whether such remnants can function as “assets” or remain as “liabilities,” revealing these issues through the intersection of everyday life and artistic practice.
＜Artist＞
KUBOTAOGUISS TomohiroKUBOTAOGUISS Tomohiro completed his Master’s degree in the Printmaking research field, Painting Major, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts in 2020, and is currently enrolled in the Doctoral Program at the same institution. His work focuses on the notion of cultural assets as “debts,” developing projects—often without physical production—that involve the temporary relocation of objects, contractual agreements, and acts of assuming others’ obligations.
His practice aims to critically examine how art intersects with institutional and economic systems by engaging with processes such as ownership, administration, transportation, and preservation. In recent years, starting from personal experiences and real-life events, he has explored the dynamics of ownership and responsibility within communities, and the expanding network of indebtedness that extends from individuals to organizations and broader institutions.
Photo by Ujin Matsuo
＜Past Exhibition＞
2024
“in search of lost figures”, Tokyo Arts and Space (Tokyo)
— Curated by COM_COURSE (Shin Yoshimura + KUBOTAOGUISS Tomohiro)
“Practice_02: Repeat”, EUKARYOTE (Tokyo)
Medium and Dimension: Maze, Gasbon Metabolism (Yamanashi)
— Curated by Takuya Nakao
2023
AIR3 SCG, BnA Alter Museum SCG (Kyoto)
2022
“eat ro ekyu”, EUKARYOTE (Tokyo)
— Curated by Tomoya Iwata
and others
＜Past works＞
eat ro ekyu (2022) / Certificate of authenticity, reception desk, backyard, temporary wall, refrigerator, ONU, telephone, Wi-Fi router, monitor, video footage, flowerpot, cleaning tools, plastic bottles, plasterboard, and other objects.
The work is realized through the relocation, exchange, and reorganization of objects found in the given space. The title of the piece is “Temporary List of the Wastes, and upon each execution, its title is changed to an anagram of the location where the work is carried out. In this particular case, the work took as its motif the commercial gallery space of EUKARYOTE in the Gaienmae area of Tokyo, aiming to improve the functionality of the space through temporary interior modifications.
©︎KUBOTAOGUISS Tomohiro
“Temporary List of the Wastes” (2017) / Variable materials (assorted items relocated from storage)
This Life installation was presented as a graduation project at Tokyo University of the Arts.
A large number of items that had overflowed from the private life of the artist’s family were relocated into the exhibition space, where they were sorted and organized throughout the duration of the show. The arrangement of the objects was gradually adjusted in accordance with the changing criteria of classification. At the end of the exhibition, the items deemed unnecessary were actually discarded, while the rest were returned to everyday life.
This work transformed the very process of repeatedly re-sorting personal and surrounding possessions—until they reached a manageable quantity—into an artwork.
It unfolds as an archival practice that explores value judgments between the public and the private; the duality of wealth and debt; the temporality and ambiguity of decision-making; the authority and urgency embedded in acts of selection; and even the childishness that accompanies such acts.
©︎KUBOTAOGUISS Tomohiro
