News
Hideaki Yamanobe’s Solo Exhibition details.
○ 『The Peak』 A Showcase at Galerie Friedrich Müller, Frankfurt, Germany
From October 11 to November 15, 2025.
“The Peak” by Hideaki Yamanobe
In his paintings, Hideaki Yamanobe develops a silent, almost meditative world of images. By means of nuanced gradations of white and grey on a black grounding, he creates abstract spaces that intimate more than they specify. Associations rise from the surfaces of these images like mist in autumn, momentarily forming a shape before disappearing again into indeterminacy.
Yamanobe’s works combine a contemporary, minimalist pictorial language in a quite remarkable way with the traditions of East Asian landscape painting. His paintings exude the spirit of the ‘haboku’ (splashed-ink) technique that evolved in 15th-century Japan—that “broken” form of painting where shapes are forever dissolving. What is key is the conscious use of empty space (‘ma’) as a creative tool. These lacunae are not merely absence, but through their contrast to the depicted shape, they create a subtle tension that kindles the imagination and encourages contemplation. While the masters of the Muromachi period always relied on actual themes, such as landscape representations, Yamanobe remains firmly committed to abstraction.
Nevertheless, his paintings invite the viewer to let their eyes wander over the surface as if across a snowy plateau high up in the mountains. Spontaneously painted, translucent layers of paint form diffuse structures reminiscent of wisps of fog, lines of clouds, or rock formations. Despite the immense reduction, we can sense in them the sublimity of the Alpine world, recalling those moments of clarity and silence that the artist himself experienced when climbing the Zugspitze and Mont Blanc. The color surfaces condense to form a landscape that, for its part, becomes a metaphor: The mountain not only stands for itself as a natural form but as a symbol of life per se. This is like the effort of slowly making your way up stony slopes, the path uncertain. That long striving for the peak, reaching the summit as the moment of triumph and of the greatest happiness, to invariably be followed by the descent down into the depths. This ambivalence resonates in the Japanese concept of ‘mono no aware’: the melancholic awareness of the beauty of the fleeting and the transience of all things.
Yamanobe’s aesthetics of reduction is rooted in the Japanese art tradition as the expression of intellectual depth and sincerity. When viewing his works, one is caught in the tension of formal silence and the inner power of the images that prompt both contemplative immersion and existential reflection simultaneously.
－Xenia Lessos (Professor, University of Innsbruck)
○ ”Blaze of a collection” Iwaki City Art Museum
From November 15 to December 14, 2025
Admission fee: 500 yen
*Closed: Mondays and November 25 (Tuesday) *Note: Museum will be open on Monday, November 24.
Hideaki Yamanobe’s painting “Through the Clouds” (2025, 227 x 145 cm), which was exhibited at his solo show at BASE GALLERY in March 2025, has been acquired by the Iwaki City Art Museum. It will be featured as a work by an invited artist in the museum’s upcoming collection exhibition, alongside pieces by: Koichiro Wakamatsu, Kiyoshi Saito, Yasuo Taguchi, Churyo Sato, Christo, and Yves Klein, among others.
Iwaki City Art Museum focuses its collection primarily on fine arts related to the Iwaki region and contemporary art created after 1945.
To make contemporary art more accessible and engaging through this collection, the museum presents a curated plan centered around the keywords “The Landscape” and “Man.” Works are introduced starting with easily recognizable motifs, such as depictions of children, friends, and everyday life, ranging from realistic paintings to those with slightly mystified or abstract expressions.
To encourage active engagement, a voting and notification area will be established, allowing visitors to choose their single most recommended work from the exhibition. This approach is designed to both broaden interest in contemporary art and alleviate any initial hesitation or “weakness consciousness” toward it. The exhibition aims to be a valuable opportunity for visitors to appreciate the brilliant individuality inherent in the works of various contemporary artists.
○ Hideaki Yamanobe’s Works & Essay in Gekkan Gallery art magazine (Nov. 2025)
Hideaki Yamanobe’s feature “My 10 Pieces” and his essay “The Cologne Window Glass” will appear in the November 2025 issue of Gekkan Gallery art magazine.
Print Edition: ¥880
Digital Edition: ¥611
Available through: Online Shops and Kinokuniya Bookstore
*Please also read the May 2025 issue of “Gekkan Gallery”.
Inside 17th Dialogue: Hideaki Yamanobe in conversation with Koichi Ebizuka
