Group Exhibition IMAGINATION
LURF GALLERY is pleased to present "IMAGINATION," a group exhibition featuring five artists active both in Japan and internationally: Shimpei Arima, Oscar Oiwa, Isshin Tanisaki, Iori Nagashima, and Shimpei Yoshida.
The five participating artists all share a common starting point: memory.
The exhibition showcases a diverse range of approaches—paintings that weave personal memories into imaginative narratives of social and environmental issues; expressions that bridge memories of nature and landscapes to the origins of life; and works that use the tactile texture of wood to connect the viewer's imagination to the memories of time carved into tree rings.
Also featured are works that layer personal and collective experiences through the medium of photography, and paintings that explore the temporality and presence between objects and people through everyday memories.
Rather than merely reproducing the past, these works are reconstructed through the lens of imagination, emerging as entirely new images.
In this exhibition, five distinct expressions coexist, each offering a unique distance and mode of transformation where memory and imagination intersect.
LURF GALLERY will exhibit at ART FAIR TOKYO 2026, which will be held from March 13 (Fri.) to 15 (Sun.), 2026, and will display works by the artists participating in this exhibition.
EXHIBITION OVERVIEW
Group Exhibition "IMAGINATION
| Meeting Period | Friday, March 13 - Sunday, April 5, 2026 |
| Venue | LURF GALLERY 1F & 2F |
| Hours | 11:00 - 19:00 |
| Address | Roob1, 28-13 Sarugaku-cho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0033, Japan |
| cooperation | ART FRONT GALLERY / mona art office |
For inquiries, please contactthis way (direction close to the speaker or towards the speaker)
ART WORKS
SHIMPEI ARIMA
sugicodama, 2019, Japanese cedar (approx. 160 years old), H49 x W130 x L77 cm
*Reference works
OSCAR OIWA
Pine River, 2015, oil on canvas, H138×W178cm
Photo : Hiroshi Noguchi
ISSHIN TANISAKI
Calm, 2026, oil on canvas, H145.5 x W145.5cm
IORI NAGASHIMA
Books and Orange, 2026, oil on canvas, H45.5 x W53cm
SHIMPEI YOSHIDA
My Wife, 2026, oil on canvas, H41 x W31.8cm
ARTISTS
SHIMPEI ARIMA
1979 Born in Saga Prefecture, Japan. Lives and works in Oita City, Oita Prefecture.
2004 Completed Master’s Program in Art Education, Graduate School of Education, Oita University.
Shimpei Arima began his artistic practice while in graduate school, creating sculptural works using sugi (Japanese cedar) found throughout Japan.
His signature series, titled "Sugicodama," is carved from cedar and emerges from a dialogue with the human-like spirit he senses within the wood. Arima has exhibited both in Japan and abroad, and his works are installed in various cultural institutions.
OSCAR OIWA
1965 Born in São Paulo, Brazil.
1989 Graduated from School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo.
1991 Moved to Tokyo
2002 Moved to New York City.
Currently lives and works in New York City.
I am an artist living in the "world in between". Born in Sao Paulo to Japanese parents, I now work internationally. My practice is born from the experience of moving between cultures, landscapes, and psychological states...
ISSHIN TANISAKI
1974 Born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.
Isshin Tanisaki works with the theme of "life's energy and circulation," painting vortices—combinations of color and texture that symbolize energetic motion—to embody vital force on the canvas.
Since the early 2000s he has shown landscapes made from dense fields of fine dots, the very origin of his vortex motif. By positioning the vortex as a primordial form underlying all phenomena, and rendering vortex worlds in a minimalist way, Tanisaki reflects on the energy that generates life itself and on the formation of our everyday world and the cosmos.
IORI NAGASHIMA
1997 Born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
2020 Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Oil Painting, Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan
Iori Nagashima paints everyday life. Working primarily with figures, still lives, and landscapes, he captures fleeting moments of quiet time on canvas. While pursuing the forms of his subjects and the light that falls on them, his brushwork—emerging from the body—and the accumulated decisions of when to paint and when to hold back bring into view a psychological distance from the motif, a temporal distance from memory, and a shifting relationship with the viewer.
SHIMPEI YOSHIDA
1992 Born in Nara Prefecture, Japan.
2014 Graduated from the Oil Painting Course at Kyoto University of the Arts (formerly Kyoto University of Art and Design).
Working primarily with painting, the artist is currently based in Tokyo. Prompted by the experience surrounding the death of his grandmother, he began a portrait series that marked a turning point in his practice. In 2018, he participated in an artist-in-residence program at the artist-run space FRISE in Hamburg, Germany.
Engaging with themes such as existence and absence, and memory and forgetting, his work questions the fragility and significance of what is difficult to perceive, what has been forgotten, and what remains invisible—within a contemporary society that often assumes everything that is "seen" can be shared universally with others.
INSTALLATION VIEWS
