Mohri Yuko: On Physis

The Artizon Museum has held its annual Jam Session exhibition, a collaboration combining works from the Ishibashi Foundation Collection with works by a contemporary artist, since the museum opened in 2020. For the fifth Jam Session, we have invited Mohri Yuko, an artist who is attracting attention in the international art scene, to take part.

Mohri’s installations and sculptures use magnetism, electricity, air and dust, water and temperature to make visitors sensitive to forms latent in the currents and fluctuations of the spaces in which she exhibits.

The title of this exhibition is On Physis. The word “Physis” is an ancient Greek term translated as “Nature” or “Essence.” It was used in what is known as Early Greek Philosophy in addressing the question of what the basic principle behind everything might be, a fundamental philosophical question today as well.

In this sense, “Physis” was the central concern of Early Greek Philosophy. The surviving fragments of that ancient philosophy were later collected under the title “On Nature” and used to represent philosophical interest in movement, ongoing motion: the birth, transformation, and disappearance of entities. Mohri’s work overlaps with their interest in ever-present fluid change.

For this, Mohri’s first large-scale exhibition in Japan, we have brought together both new and old works, and arranged them beside works from the Ishibashi Foundation collection, creating tranquil organic spaces filled with subtle sounds and movements that can be experienced nowhere else.

Mohri Yuko
Born in 1980 in Kanagawa, currently based in Tokyo, Japan. She received her MA in Inter-media Art from Tokyo University of the Arts.

Yuko Mohri is an artist who creates installation and sculpture not to compose (or construct) but to focus on “events” that constantly shift according to various conditions including their environment. In recent years, she has also explored this idea through video and photography.

In 2015, Mohri received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council for a 6-month residency in New York. In the same year, she received the Grand Prix, Nissan Art Award. In 2016, Mohri took a residency at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and was in residence at the Camden Arts Centre, London. 2018 saw her as an East Asian Cultural Exchange Envoy, visiting 4 cities in China. In 2019, she received a grant from the Institut français for a 3-month residency in Paris.

Her major solo exhibitions have been at the Japan Pavilion of the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, in 2024, at Camden Arts Centre, in 2018, and at Towada Art Center in 2018. Mohri has also taken part in a number of international group shows such as the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023); 23rd Biennale of Sydney (2022); Asian Art Biennial (2021); 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2021); Glasgow International (2021); the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2018); 14th Biennale de Lyon, France (2017); Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2016).