David Zwirner is pleased to present Statics of an Egg, an exhibition bringing together a selection of multimedia work by a group of Japanese-born artists, along with contributions from an earlier generation of pioneering artists whose practices have influenced and inspired these contemporary figures. Curated by Martin Germann, the exhibition features new and recent work by Ryoko Aoki, Masaya Chiba, Miho Dohi, Daisuke Fukunaga, Kenji Ide, Soshiro Matsubara, Yu Nishimura, Hikari Ono, Reina Sugihara, and Masanori Tomita. Interspersed throughout the presentation are works spanning the 1950s to the 1990s by Koji Enokura, Yutaka Matsuzawa, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Fujiko Nakaya, and Isamu Wakabayashi. Statics of an Egg features a network of artistic peers—gathered by Nishimura and Ide in collaboration with Germann—who all share a deep-seated commitment to the exploration of material and formal realms where ideas condensate, structures unfold, and perception expands into liminal and uncharted territory.
The concept of gravity surfaces as a central theme in the exhibition: as a universal physical force shaping the behavior of matter in space; as a particular psychological weight marking the pull of memory, opacity, and shadow; and as a cultural touchstone connecting artistic practices across time, from the rapid economic changes of postwar Japan to the nation’s sociopolitical realities today. Here, influence operates less as a linear narrative than as a form of attraction—a gravitational pull that engenders a shared attentiveness to how things fall, accumulate, resist, and decay, thus allowing for an open-ended exploration of balance, atmosphere, and materiality.
