Catch&Take

Otherwise Gallery is pleased to present
Makoto Egashira: Catch & Take

This exhibition is held in collaboration with BIWAKO Biennale 2025 as a pre-exhibition, ahead of Egashira’s participation in the Biennale.

Known for his playful and eccentric use of materials such as floral blankets and domestic goods, Makoto Egashira creates unique installations that blur the boundaries between everyday life and memory.

For Catch & Take, the gallery space is inhabited by strange and nostalgic blanket creatures—suspended, quietly casting fishing lines, or subtly responding to the viewer’s presence. Fragmented narratives unfold throughout the space, forming an uncanny landscape shaped by the artist’s memories and imagination.

The exhibition title, “Catch & Take,” references the fishing term “catch and release,” and suggests shifting relationships in contemporary society—between people and things, memory and forgetting, inclusion and exclusion. Beneath the work’s humorous and endearing appearance lies a complex web of questions unique to Egashira’s practice.

We invite you to step into this fantastical and whimsical world, and leave with a renewed awareness of fading values and the forgotten presences that surround us.

Artist Statement
Hello, I’m Makoto Egashira.
Otherwise Gallery is pleased to present
Makoto Egashira: Catch & Take

This exhibition is held in collaboration with BIWAKO Biennale 2025 as a pre-exhibition, ahead of Egashira’s participation in the Biennale.

Known for his playful and eccentric use of materials such as floral blankets and domestic goods, Makoto Egashira creates unique installations that blur the boundaries between everyday life and memory.

For Catch & Take, the gallery space is inhabited by strange and nostalgic blanket creatures—suspended, quietly casting fishing lines, or subtly responding to the viewer’s presence. Fragmented narratives unfold throughout the space, forming an uncanny landscape shaped by the artist’s memories and imagination.

The exhibition title, “Catch & Take,” references the fishing term “catch and release,” and suggests shifting relationships in contemporary society—between people and things, memory and forgetting, inclusion and exclusion. Beneath the work’s humorous and endearing appearance lies a complex web of questions unique to Egashira’s practice.

We invite you to step into this fantastical and whimsical world, and leave with a renewed awareness of fading values and the forgotten presences that surround us.
This work began as a pre-exhibition for BIWAKO Biennale 2025, rooted in a personal memory and my own connection to Lake Biwa. One vivid starting point was a childhood fishing trip to the lake with my father and one of his younger colleagues—a lively, unforgettable day of bass fishing that left a deep impression on me.

In this exhibition, two stories of once-familiar but now shifting presences overlap. One is the floral blanket—a household item once popular and beloved across many Japanese homes. These blankets, once cherished in daily life, are now rarely seen, tucked away in closets or found in secondhand shops.

The other is the largemouth bass of Lake Biwa. These fish, which once crossed the ocean to Japan, became central to the country’s bass fishing boom. Over time, they came to be valued not as living creatures, but for their size and sporting appeal. As their numbers increased, they became subject to regulation, and today they are often removed after being caught rather than released.

The title Catch & Take is a play on the phrase “catch and release,” once common in bass fishing. However, in current practice, releasing bass is no longer the norm—they are now typically retrieved and removed.

This exhibition invites viewers to “catch” and “take” these forms—things that were once embraced, but whose place in the world has quietly shifted. Through this, I hope to offer a gentle opportunity to reflect on how time transforms the value and meaning of the things around us.