EXHIBITIONS

Tokyo International Gallery presents “Hanging Windows,”
a solo exhibition by Okaji Killi

Tokyo International Gallery (Shinagawa–Tennoz, Tokyo) is pleased to announce Hanging Windows, a solo exhibition by Okaji Killi, on view from Saturday, January 17 to Saturday, February 21, 2026.

Killi’s practice centers on urban landscapes seen through windows. The scenery observed through glass is reflected, fragmented, and transformed by the material’s inherent properties, eventually emerging as an entirely new vista. Rendered using traditional Nihonga techniques, his windows possess the subdued chromatic tones and planar quality of mineral pigments, allowing them to subtly assimilate into their surrounding space.

Killi also explores the intimate relationship between painting and the private realm of the room. Through the act of “hanging” a work, a new spatial dimension unfolds within the living environment. We invite you to experience at the gallery the ambiguous, window-framed worlds that Killi evokes in this exhibition.

＝Exhibition Statement＝

Hanging Windows

Growing up surrounded by architectural drawings, models, and photographs, I have, since childhood, painted while imagining my works hanging in someone else’s living space. Looking back through art history, from the 17th century—when Dutch civic society fostered a rich cultural milieu—up to the present day, painting has remained deeply intertwined with the intimate sphere of the home. Through my practice, I have continued to explore what it means for a painting to inhabit the living environment, a space that holds unique significance for each individual.
To me, painting is something that quietly accompanies the flow of our daily lives. It intertwines with the atmosphere and activities of a space, gradually weaving a new, singular spatial experience.
The themes I engage with today— “windows,” “glass,” and “grids”—function as important devices in considering the relationship between painting and domestic space. The distortions and repetitions that arise on glass create discrepancies from an object’s original appearance, transforming it into a form that seems to dissolve into its surroundings. The grid, meanwhile, operates as a denial of a “natural,” perspectival mode of seeing, while simultaneously invoking a desire for depth. In these moments, painting establishes an experience akin to peering out from a windowsill, becoming a site where the values of the visible and invisible quietly shift.
The exhibition Hanging Windows is an attempt to allow these elements to intersect, enabling the paintings to breathe as part of the interior environment. Like looking at a landscape through a window, the works aim to offer viewers an experience in which visibility and invisibility, past and present, and the spaces of others and the rhythms of one’s own life gently overlap.
Okaji Killi