PARIS.- Reflecting a particular Japanese conception of the world—one of constant flux, in which reality is subject to change and all things are impermanent—Gōzō Yoshimasu’s works resemble existential landscapes in their ability to draw equally from the abstraction of thought and the observation of the living world. Now regarded as one of the most singular figures in modern Japanese poetry, the artist and poet—born in Tokyo in 1939—has, since the 1960s, sought to radically and profoundly renew poetic writing, both in its forms of enunciation and in its modes of appearance. In other words, his is a writing of emotion, always open to its surroundings, that he explores through engagement with various disciplines—painting, photography, and film—or reinterprets in performative contexts through vocalizations, gestures, and collaborations with other artists.

Situated at the intersection of gestural painting and verbal expression, Yoshimasu’s approach is also deeply informed by calligraphy, an ancestral art that combines technique and spirituality. Experimenting with words, typography, and punctuation, as well as sometimes incorporating fragments of foreign languages and found texts, his visual poems manifest the teeming multiplicity of language. More than a preferred medium, language has become for Yoshimasu a “medium of life” that he engages in daily. In a practice comparable to nikki—literally “days held in memory” in Japanese—he produces a daily poem or artwork, conceived as a form of notation through which he seeks to register the ephemeral nature of existence. How can one express what language does not always manage to formulate? How can the forces and energies that give rise to it be brought to the very surface of the page? How can another, more incisive language emerge from within those we inherit? These are questions the artist materializes in various series, where what matters above all is presence in the world and the sensitive connection maintained within it.

“Dear Monster” (Kaibutsu-kun), which lends its title to this exhibition, is representative of this approach. In search of a “possible poetry” in the aftermath of the catastrophe of March 11 that struck Japan in 2011, Yoshimasu produced this series of visual poems between 2012 and 2016, while driven by a profound sense of compassion and commitment in the face of the disaster’s consequences. In a daily routine reminiscent of Buddhist monks copying sutras, he arranges large sheets of paper every day and draws lines by hand. He then inscribes his writings upon them—often interwoven with those of the postwar poet and thinker Takaaki Yoshimoto (and Yoshimasu’s mentor)—which he composes and recomposes before covering them with ink and brightly colored paint until they became illegible. By disrupting language through these splashes—sometimes calligraphic, sometimes explosive—he offers the viewer a fragmented, almost shattered script in his attempt to articulate certain traumas, here serving as a tribute to the voices and shadows of the deceased. As if, through this series, the poet were seeking to literally “incorporate” the tragedy, situating it between creation and destruction, memory and oblivion, in a liminal zone close to the Buddhist concept of bardo, defining this intermediate state between death and rebirth.

Along similar lines, the series Fire Embroidery (2016–2018) and Voix (2019–2020), also featured in the exhibition, extend this exploration through comparable processes and gestures. These are gestures that Yoshimasu has been recording and preserving on video since 2006, in a diary-like practice, as evidenced by Postcard Ciné #48 "The ships' signals look like accent marks" and “i” CITY. They are presented in dialogue with his annotated polaroids Momentary Ecriture (1999–2000), created in contact with the places and landscapes he traverses like so many “days kept in memory.”

Through the superimposition of words and gestures, colors and impressions, and by also venturing along certain metaphysical paths, Yoshimasu’s visual and poetic experiments seem to have indeed traversed the past decades in search of a rare and precious space, resonating between different states of reality, at the threshold between visible and invisible worlds. A space whose codes sometimes elude us, but which always finds a sensitive echo within us, provided we take the time to dwell on it.

Elodie Royer

Gōzō Yoshimasu lives and works in Tokyo. His recent solo exhibitions include: Yasushi Inoue Memorial Hall, Asahikawa (2023–2024); Maebashi City Museum of Literature (2023); and the Tabata Memorial Museum of Writers and Artists, Tokyo (2022); as well as a traveling exhibition held at the Ashikaga Museum of Art, Tochigi, the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum (Naha), and the Shoto Museum of Art, Tokyo, between 2017 and 2018. In 2016, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, presented a retrospective of his work, The Voice Between: The Art and Poetry of Gōzō Yoshimasu. His work has also been featured in several major group exhibitions, including the 15th Shanghai Biennale (2025–2026) and the 36th São Paulo Biennial (2025), and is currently on view at the Frac Sud – Cité de l’art contemporain, Marseille (through November 15, 2026). The Kunsthalle Zürich will dedicate an exhibition to him in February 2027. The recipient of numerous awards in Japan, he has notably received the Japan Art Academy Prize and the Imperial Prize (2015), the title of Person of Cultural Merit, as well as the Order of the Rising Sun (2013). He is the author of some fifty books; in France, his works include Ex-voto: a thousand steps and more (Les Petits Matins, 2009) and Osiris, dieu de pierre (Éditions Circé, 1999).