Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group
Solo Exhibition
A Hole within a Hole within a Hole
2025.10.11 (Sat) - 11.9 (Sat)
Opening hours: 12:00 – 18:00 *During Art Week Tokyo period (11.5 – 11.9) 10:00 – 18:00
Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and holidays *Open on 11.9 (Sun)
Opening reception: 10.11 (Sat) 17:30 – 19:00
Exhibition to take place around the same time: MEET YOUR ART FESTIVAL 2025
2025.10.10 (Fri) – 10.13 (Mon)
*Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group will participate in both Art Exhibition “Ahead of the Rediscovery Stream” and Art Fair “MEET YOUR ARTISTS”.
In cooperation with (in no particular order):
Seishiro Kibe [Member, International Academy of Astronautics(IAA); Former Vice President, International Astronautical Federation (IAF)], Tocasi Inc., Tomoyoshi Hasegawa, Kazuhisa Misahima
Gakushikai, Kanda Tsushinki Co., Ltd.
Makoto Aida, Gelitin, JR, Sachiko Kazama, Osamu Matsuda, mé, SIDE CORE
BioClub Tokyo, MITSUI KOMUTEN, Sado Island Galaxy Art Festival, Shohei Asami, Takuto Higuchi, Hidetoshi Inanaga, Suguru Ito, Kohei Kobayashi, Marina Lisa Komiya, Kenta Nishimura, Hikaru Sato, Tomohito Wakui, Shiori Watanabe, Shinpei Yokota
We at ANOMALY are pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition of works by Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group (hereinafter referred to as “Chim↑Pom.” Titled A Hole within a Hole within a Hole, the exhibition will run from October 11 (Sat.) to November 9 (Sun.), 2025.
One of Japan’s leading artist collectives, Chim↑Pom makes all-out efforts to intervene in contemporary society through real action. It conducts projects, and produces and shows works, that are charged with an urgency and tension while having a humorous streak. Their activities go beyond mere criticism and satire; they take a critical look at domains that society has marginalized and focus on things that have been kept out of sight.
Titled A Hole within a Hole within a Hole, this exhibition takes as its theme the multilayered holes in the urban infrastructure such as manholes and sewers, and space debris and other trash and junk. It can be positioned as an extension of their practice to date, in respect of frequently having holes function as metaphors for naraku (hell), pointing out the linkage of cities by transmission lines and pipelines (tubes≒holes) in planetary urbanization theory, and overlaying space debris and other waste on all this. While taking up subjects of mutually different scales and dimensions in a cross-wise manner, these subjects overlap with each other in the concepts of wreckage, absence, and invisibility. To fix our gaze on these holes in the broad sense and invisible things is an act of critically rearranging things and space which we have endeavored to discard, forget, or not look directly at – and, moreover, which have regulated society. They are also subjects that ought to be brought in the open today, when we are facing serious environmental and waste-related problems.
Space debris is a type of waste that advances in science and technology continue to produce. It is the ultimate form of rubbish in the present age. As Georges Battaille argued in connection with non-productive expenditure (dépense), human activities are leaving scars from the excess and wastefulness that they inevitably breed. Besides being meaningless dross, waste is at the same time a symbol that provides a viewpoint for criticizing culture. Debris continues to float around in outer space as a negative legacy including tacit questions for future generations.
These days, when the political activities of Elon Musk have come more conspicuous, being in outer space, which had been viewed as a dream that could never come true, is no longer a fantasy; it has become a social phenomenon. At the same time, however, it seems like the prophetic actualization of such fantasies, like the fragments of wrecks from future cosmic wars repeatedly depicted by the Japanese manga and anime of the past.
naraku, Atrium space of Ohjo Building, slabs, wires, sound, mixed media “Na-Lcky” Installation view, Tokyo, 2023 Photo: Kenji Morita
In addition, holes are not simply absences; they are imbued with a latent power to induce new meaning and order. In short, they can conceivably be reconsidered as places of genesis. The holes in urban infrastructure may be termed the unseen bodies supporting society. Although they are indispensable to everyday life, holes all over our surroundings are liable to be forgotten and driven out to the fringes of consciousness. To shed light on such invisible infrastructure is to re-excavate domains that modern cities have suppressed, and is connected to the “fragments of ruins” of cities described by Walter Benjamin. The holes in cities are spaces of forgetfulness hidden on the underside of the order which society has placed on the surface.
Practice handling such multilayered holes has an important context even in terms of art history. Robert Smithson incorporated ruins and quarries into his works as non-productive terrain, and blurred the boundaries between the natural and the artificial through his earthworks. Minimalism formed void and slices of space. Following in the footsteps of these predecessors, the challenge taken up by Chim↑Pom here is to reconstruct the series of questions presented by holes through the contemporaneous substances of rubbish and infrastructure.
Build-Burger / So see you again tomorrow, too?, 2018, Lambda print mounted on aluminum, H120xW120cm
One of the works in this exhibition is a new version of Build-Burger, with waste sandwiched between a building structure and slabs (conversely speaking, waste piled up in a hole in urban space). It makes visible the existence of things that became unneeded and were discarded on the fringes of society and in everyday crevices, and symbolizes the repeated scrap-and-build process. Build-Burger is not only a critical rethinking of the conventional urban order and functions of urban space; it also acts as a device that calls forth social and environmental questions in the minds of viewers. By its display along with the concept of holes and space debris, Build-Burger traverses both microscopic urban space and macroscopic cosmic space. It may be regarded as a piece showcasing the critical practice of Chim↑Pom that makes the multilayered meaning of absences and blanks visible.
Akataro (Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group No3), 2024 Dead skin, H11×W8 mm / Cube size:H50xW50xD50mm
Furthermore, the exhibition will also display Akataro, a work that symbolizes the microscopic ruins and holes hidden in the details of everyday life, like Build-Burger. Akataro is made from organic grime (aka) that the artists collected from around the world. In a vector opposite to that of the vast universe, it expands the world of the work in a microscopic direction, and functions as a device summoning the critical perspective of the viewers to matter that has not been visible to them. As such, it has a position complementary to Build-Burger and space debris.
Besides indicating a structure of absences in a sequence similar to a nested configuration, the title A Hole within a Hole within a Hole reflects the reality of the unneeded things and blanks pushed out to the fringes of society and the universe in a multilayered superposition. It also evokes the fundamental question of the methodology by which art can make the invisible manifest in the present age.
This exhibition is a critical demonstration of the potential of imaginative powers that the unneeded, absent, and invisible have, through the practice of Chim↑Pom.
The solo exhibition will be the first held by Chim↑Pom at ANOMALY in three years. Concurrently, the group will show a new performance in collaboration with Tetsuya Komuro at the Meet Your Art Festival ‒ Art Exhibition held in Tennozu. We hope you can manage to find the time to see this performance as well.
The artist collective Chim↑Pom was organized in Tokyo in 2005 by Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Ellie, Masataka Okada, and Toshinori Mizuno. It has exhibited a steady stream of critical works that pursue the realities of the times and are all-out interventions in contemporary society. It has not only taken part in exhibitions around the world but also conducted various projects on its own. In chronicling the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the radiation exposure resulting from the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it reacted with the consciousness of diverse affected persons, and triggered discussions that drew in mass media. In a similar vein, it proposed Donʼt Follow the Wind, an international exhibition to be held at a location in one of the radiation-contaminated zones in Fukushima designated as “difficult-to-return.” The exhibition is to run over the long term for which no one will be able to go to see it until the ban on access is lifted. It opened in 2015 with their participation as artists too, and is still being held.
Over the years 2016 – 2017, Chim↑Pom engaged in activities that took as their theme the function of borderlines, and individual freedom and involvement. It approached the wall between Mexico and the United States, and built a treehouse along the border to serve as a USA Visitor Center. The activities heralded its intervention into problems related to immigration and national borders.
Right from its organization, Chim↑Pom has held various projects in the public sphere on urban theory presenting the “private/public” dichotomy. These may be exemplified by Super Rat (2006~), in which the members caught rats that were resistant to rat poison; Black of Death (2008 and 2013), in which they caused crows to gather in the sky above them; and Love is Over (2014), in which the wedding of Ellie, one of the members, was held on the street in the form of a demonstration. Their work Chim↑Pom Street (2016~) incorporated an actual street into the host premises as a practice combining the public dimension and their own artist-run space. In these and other ways, it has expanded the possibilities of the street in art.
At the Asian Art Biennale held in Taiwan in 2017, it constructed Chim↑Pom Street with a length of 200 meters extending from a public street to the interior of the museum. It promulgated independent regulations going beyond public and private lines for the street, and held block parties and demonstrations there. The work acquired a legendary status. In 2018, Chim↑Pom came out with Ningen Restaurant, a project that was produced in a building in Tokyoʼs Kabuki-cho district shortly before it was razed as part of the urban redevelopment in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics. As a venue for live art events bringing together all sorts of people and localities, Ningen Restaurant offered spontaneous lifestyles to society and exerted a great influence.
In addition, Chim↑Pom has been creating works and projects revolving around themes such as environmental problems due to mass consumption and mass disposal, and the lives of the members themselves. It does not consume, or let others consume, many of its projects as transitory affairs; it has created its own forums for discussion and archives by means such as publishing books. It continues to organize projects while changing them into various forms, in order to sound the alarm about happenings that are liable to get buried in the huge glut of news.
The works at the base of their projects are in the collections of institutions including not only Japanese museums but also the Guggenheim Museum and Centre Pompidou. Their ongoing activities as one of Asiaʼs leading art collectives are opening up a new age.
In April 2022, they changed their name from Chim↑Pom to Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group.
Selected solo exhibitions include “Chim↑Pom: Happy Spring” Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2022), “May, 2020, Tokyo / A Drunk Pandemic” ANOMALY (Tokyo, 2020), “Non-Burnnable” Dallas Contemporary (Dallas, 2017), “Sukurappu ando Birudo project: Paving the Street” Kitakore Building (Tokyo, 2017), “So see you again tomorrow, too?” Kabukicho Promotion Association Building (Tokyo, 2016).
Selected group exhibitions include “Inaugural Exhibition – From the Origin to the Future” Naoshima New Museum of Art (Kagawa, 2025), Alkantara Festival/”Engawa” Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (Lisbon, 2023), “GLOBAL(E)RESISTANCE” Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2020), “Athens Biennale 2018” TTT Building (Athens, 2018), “6th Asian Art Biennial 2017” National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taichung, 2017), “Lyon Biennale 2017” La Sucrière & MACLYON (LYON, 2017), “Prudential Eye Awards” ArtScience Museum (Singapore, 2015).
Other exhibitions and events of the artist
Sado Island Galaxy Art Festival 2025 Autumn
2025.9.19 (Fri) – 11.9 (Sun)
Ryotsu area and multiple other locations throughout Sado Island, Niigata, Japan
BENTEN 2 Art Night Kabukicho
2025.11.1 (Sat) – 11.3 (Mon)
Ohjo building and other venues in Kabukicho, Tokyo
Reference article (in Japanese): 東洋一の繁華街・歌舞伎町をディープに回遊するオールナイトアートイベント ー BENTEN 2 Art Night Kabukicho ー 開催決定
Art Week Tokyo
2025.11.5 (Wed) – 11.9 (Sun)
・AWT VIDEO “Rituals, or the Absurd Beauty of Prayers”@SMBC East Tower 1F Lobby
・AWT BAR (Artist cocktail)＠WALL Aoyama