Noe Aoki
Solo Exhibition
All that floats down – 2025
2025.5.31 (Sat.) – 6.28 (Sat.)
Opening hours: 12:00 – 18:00
Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and holidays
Talk event: 6.14 (Sat.) 17:00 – 18:30
Speakers: Noe Aoki, Irina Grigore (anthropologist)
*Japanese only
*The talk event is now fully booked. Thank you for your interest.
Opening reception: 5.31 (Sat.) 17:00 – 19:00
*The artist will be present at the reception.
We at ANOMALY are pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition of works by the sculptor Noe Aoki titled All that floats down – 2025 from May 31 (Sat.) to June 28 (Sat.), 2025.
This exhibition will display Aoki’s newest works that developed on a large scale after that at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum last year and her solo exhibition at Gallery MAZEKOZE in Nagano. It will also be an opportunity to Offering / Hyogo, her latest copperplate print that she produced in connection with a work permanently installed at Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art and will be shown in Tokyo for the first time.
All that floats down, the title this exhibition, symbolizes that we are living in the midst of a flow and circulation, and has often been used as the title for Aoki’s works and exhibitions. In the rapidly changing, unstable world of today, of what does All that floats down speak to us in this exhibition?
Made mainly of iron, Aoki’s works begin with cutting industrial iron sheets into simple shapes (circles and lines) with her own hands, using a fusing torch. Sometimes, the number of parts she cuts out of the plates reaches into the thousands. This process occupies more than 80 percent of the total production time. Thereafter, she welds the cut-out parts together to complete the work. Iron is inside our bodies and is one of the most plentiful elements on earth. For as many as 4,000 years, it has accompanied humankind in the march of civilized society. Aoki’s sculptures are made of this particular material with traces of her cuttings that give us an organic impression and induce a pleasant experience. It is as if the space contains our bodies and the works, and even the earth itself. Her works are open to people who view them regardless of whether or not they have any specialized knowledge of art, and further, to everything that is here.
Aoki has remained vigorously active even after Mesocyclone, the solo exhibition that was held in ANOMALY in 2021, at the height of the pandemic. She held a solo exhibition titled Pillars of Light at the Ichihara Lakeside Museum (Chiba) in 2023. In it, she displayed new works born by letting her imagination fly to the land now at the bottom of the lake and the life that had once been there, in the space formed with a ceiling nine meters high. In addition, because January 2025 marked the 30th year since recovery from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, her Offering / Hyogo was permanently installed in the outdoor space linking the hills and the sea at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, which was designed by Tadao Ando. At her exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, which is freshest in our minds, she displayed works that were based on the Art Deco-style architecture of the building and its historical background. The exhibition finished with works imbued with the thoughts of one living in the present, in the white space of the museum annex designed by Kazuyo Sejima.
There they are, things that can be touched.
When held in the hands, one feels their weight and heat and coldness.
Things that feel rough or smooth and can be stroked.
Things that are definitely there.
I make sculptures with such things.
But what I really want to make are the things that cannot be seen by the eye.
– Noe Aoki
In the finite space of her studio, Aoki cannot see the completed state of many of her works; it is only after their installation has been finished that she, too, can get an all-around view of them.
Even more than faithfulness to the minute calculations and plan, Aoki attaches importance to heading for what is beyond the imagination.
We are looking forward to seeing you at this exhibition of new works by Noe Aoki at ANOMALY.
Noe Aoki was born in Tokyo and now lives in Saitama Prefecture. She was awarded a master’s degree from Musashino Art University. Beginning in the 1980s, she began to produce works through repetition of the simple process of cutting industrial iron sheets into parts and reassembling the parts by welding them together. Her works are liberated from the hardness and massiveness proper to iron, as well as from the concept of sculpture, and change the space dramatically. She holds workshops on iron with children, actively participates in local art festivals in various parts of Japan, and considers interchange with places where her works are installed and the people there to be part of her life work. Her major exhibitions have been at the following venues: the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum (2024), Ichihara Lakeside Museum (solo exhibition, 2023), Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum (solo exhibition, 2019), Kirishima Open-Air Museum (solo exhibition, 2019), Fuchu Art Museum (solo exhibition, 2019), Toyota Municipal Museum (solo exhibition, 2012), Meguro Museum of Art Tokyo (solo exhibition, 2000), and many more. Her works are part of the collections of the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, National Museum of Art Osaka, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Tottori Prefectural Museum of Art, Toyota Municipal Museum, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Pola Museum of Art, and Agency for Cultural Affairs. She was selected for the Mainichi Arts Award, Nakahara Teijiro Prize, and Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize.
Photo: Tadasu Yamamoto