Pace is pleased to present Form at Now and Later 形而の而今而後, an exhibition of work by Kenjiro Okazaki at its Seoul gallery.

On view from June 28 to August 17, this presentation will bring together new and recent paintings and sculptures by the Japanese artist. This exhibition, which marks Okazaki’s first solo show in Korea, will focus on his investigations into time, space, and perception through a language of abstraction.

A celebrated artist and critic, Okazaki’s work spans painting, sculpture, performance, architecture, landscape design, robotics, and other media. He uses these seemingly disparate modes of making collectively to explore the ways that time and space can be reshaped and reconstructed through our unique cognitive experiences of the world around us. Often imbued with art historical and philosophical references, his work examines the collapse of history, memory, and form in the present moment. Through his art, and particularly in his paintings, Okazaki recreates the vast, echoing continuum of time, space, and existence, uncovering connections and mysteries from deep within our universe that inflect the current moment.

The works included in Form at Now and Later 形而の而今而後 at Pace in Seoul underscore the artist’s increasingly philosophical approach to form and abstraction. In a selection of small-scale paintings from his series Zero Thumbnails— which stem from his experiments with diptych compositions in the 1990s—abstractions seem to extend beyond compact picture plane, with color and form becoming autonomous entities in the exhibition space.

The show will also feature 16 large-scale paintings created by Okazaki in 2023 and 2024. Linking brushstrokes across multiple panels and through mirror-image relationships, these acrylic compositions invite a continually shifting visual experience that eschews any single overall impression or reading. The elaborate titles of these paintings are works of art inand of themselves, offering poetic entry points into each canvas.

Other highlights in the exhibition include the artist’s mixed media wall relief 3:15 (1983–93), the most historic work in the show, and a selection of his new synthetic marble sculptures of distorted, overlapping forms. Okazaki’s process for making these undulating sculptures—which involves mixing soil with various other materials—is in some ways akin to the formation of the Earth through collisions and accumulations. As with his work across other mediums, his new sculptures examine, question, and challenge the limits of human perception.

Kenjiro Okazaki, Circles drawn complete, returning to their starting point, curves end their progression. Birds bathed in the sunset fold their wings, and humans lose their words. The sun, having lit the earth, disappears, yet the sun itself remains unchanged in place. One plate shows cherries, another figs, and yet another grapes. When light strikes the fig plate, something twinkles like stars. The world must exist! The trees whisper in a language all understand. Nights spent plagued by doubt. Mornings where questions are answered. Even with his senses lost, the world exists around him: the vase, the red glass water pitcher (the morning light reflecting in smooth curves on the white window frame), and the world that lies beyond them., 2023 © Kenjiro Okazaki