Immortal

biscuit gallery will hold a two-person exhibition “Fumetsu” by contemporary artist Akiko Horio and painter Sawako Nasu starting June 15, 2025 (Sunday).

This exhibition will be the opening exhibition at a new biscuit gallery space in “nudge field” on the 8th floor of the Matsui Building in Shinjuku, following the gallery’s operations in Shibuya’s Shoto district.

Akiko Horio & Sawako Nasu “Fumetsu”

In this exhibition, Sawako Nasu, an artist with whom biscuit gallery has worked continuously, will participate in her first exhibition with Akiko Horio, a former member of the Gutai Art Association who has maintained her own minimalist aesthetic.

Photo:Kenta Seki

Fumetsu
Fumetsu

Akiko Horio titles her works “Untitled.”
This stems from her stance that “artworks should be silent.”
I felt it necessary to state this first. Nevertheless, in order to leave her stance as it is, without embellishment, this exhibition in which my work also participates should perhaps bear a different name. I have taken the liberty of titling this exhibition “Fumetsu” (Immortal).
Rather than speak about the works themselves, I will here only speak of the motivation behind giving it this title.

We see the object placed as it was at the moment the person who made it let it go. One cannot say this object is immortal. It is not immortal. Yet only that moment—the moment the person let it go—could be called immortal.

In Milan Kundera’s novel of the same name “Immortality,” two female figures are presented. One is a woman who raises her hand large, pushing her ego toward an immortal existence. The other is a woman who wishes to disappear not as a container carrying the ego, but simply as a being.
The former represents a certain driving force that moves history, but the latter? She is simply a being who chooses to stop from the flow of history and then walks away.
One could say that art has been created by people like the former. Yet sometimes art teaches us to stop. Because one cannot see objects without stopping. Objects are driven like stakes into the flow of time. In the last moment a certain human being, who should fade into the flow, touched it.

Horio’s works made me stop as well. She released these from her hands and left them in the world. Contrary to what one might expect from ephemeral materials before my eyes, what I felt was that this was precisely what could be called immortal.

 

Sawako Nasu

As a space for dialogue between female artists across generations, and as an attempt to reconstruct the relationship between space and works, this exhibition will present a new perspective.

Media Coverage Information

【メディア掲載情報】東京新聞 美術評にて 堀尾昭子・那須佐和子2人展『不滅』が紹介されました

Akiko Horio (Contemporary Artist)

Born in Tokushima City in 1937.
Graduated from the Nursing School attached to Tokushima University Faculty of Medicine in 1959. She worked as a nurse at Tokushima University Hospital and subsequently at Hyogo Prefecture Cancer Center. She began creating artworks around 1962, exhibited in the “Gutai Newcomer Exhibition” in 1967, and became a member of the Gutai Art Association in 1968.

Major Exhibitions: 2019 “The World of Teiji and Akiko Horio” (Kobe Watakushi Art Museum), 2021 “The Present of Akiko Horio” (Nishiwaki Okanoyama Art Museum), 2022 “Listening to the Sound of the Earth Turning: Wellbeing After the Pandemic” (Mori Art Museum), 2023 “Collection Project Frames and Waves” (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art)

Sawako Nasu (Painter)

Born in Tokyo in 1996.
Completed the Master’s Program in Oil Painting, First Studio, Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Fine Arts in 2023

Major Solo Exhibitions: 2023 “Sunny, Rainy,” biscuit gallery, 2024 “Vestige” NISO (London), 2025 “Linus’s Cloth” KEN NAKAHASHI
https://biscuitgallery.com/sawako-nasu/

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