Takuya Sugiyama solo exhibition "Creatures from a Distant Past"

MH Gallery is pleased to present “Creatures from a Distant Past,” a solo exhibition by Takuya Sugiyama, opening on April 10, 2026.

This exhibition features new works created from the artist’s memories of travel and his embodied sensory experiences.

In recent years, Sugiyama has traveled to various places, encountering moments that unexpectedly cause him to pause. A sunrise seen from a sleeper train in Laos, the sea in Okinawa on the day of his birthday, the humid bustle of Taiwan, and the dust-filled air of Indonesia. Within landscapes that constantly move and change, he sometimes experiences moments in which only he seems to remain still.

During such moments, he describes a sensation in which something flows in from the outside world while, at the same time, something from within himself seems to dissolve and flow outward. As time passes, these experiences cease to be distant memories of foreign places and instead become physical memories within the body—memories carrying their own temperature and humidity.

In this exhibition, Sugiyama transforms these travel experiences into paintings in which one-time landscapes appear almost like living creatures. As if tracing the scenery that continues to shape who he is today, the works presented here express his personal sensory experiences through a series of honest and intimate paintings.