YUICHI HIRAKO

This view of nature as an independent being living alongside humans, rather than beneath them, resonates with the philosophy of deep ecology. Rather than directly denouncing environmental damage, Hirako has expressed this conviction consistently through the formal language of painting and sculpture. At the center of his work is a story of human-like figures living unhurried, everyday lives alongside other living beings in a forest on the far side of the world. Dogs, cats, and plants appear like supporting characters in an animated feature: they set the scene, give the story its rhythm, and branch the narrative into smaller stories. In Tree, Forest, Mountain, a large-scale installation first shown in his 2025 solo exhibition ORIGIN at the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art and presented again at Art Basel Unlimited in 2026, Hirako filled a circular platform with hybrid sculptures to form a clustered landscape. Arranged in a ring, the sculptures faced the viewer at the center, not as an anonymous natural backdrop but as beings on equal footing with humans. By bringing people face to face with the nature hey have long put to use, the work restores a horizontal relationship between the two.

In POSTFOREST, Hirako extends this relationship into the vertical, presenting suspended sculpture for the first time. Occupying one section of the gallery from floor to ceiling, the work departs from his earlier floor-based clusters, dispersing sculptures of different sizes and forms into the air. Rather than facing the work from a fixed point, visitors walk among the floating forms. Much like moving through a forest, the experience turns the gallery into a space attuned to the body.

The exhibition title reflects the artist’s view of history: just as the ways humans see and define nature have changed fundamentally over the past century, the relationship between humans and nature will continue to be reshaped. Hirako embraces this change not as rupture or loss but as a natural transition, and has developed his work with the relationships yet to come in mind. The exhibition invites viewers to reflect on where humans and nature stand today, and to imagine the coexistence ahead.