The exhibition Tuning Pegs, subtitled The Architects of Darkness, draws structural inspiration from Bunraku (ぶんらく, 文樂), the traditional Japanese puppet theater, and the form of movable books. It seeks to explore encounters of unfathomable coincidences, the embrace of nocturnal possibilities, and the movement of individuals navigating uncharted, undifferentiated spaces—beings that have crash-landed after an imperceptible black flight.
Bunraku is a form of puppet theater in which three highly skilled puppeteers control different parts of a single puppet’s body. These puppeteers, clad in black fabric to erase their presence on stage, function like shadows that preexist the objects they manipulate. Their precise and disciplined motions act as markings that attempt to erase themselves under the watchful eyes of the audience. Like the slits and flaps of a movable book, they slide, carve grooves, and unfold a layered world.
The three figures appearing in this exhibition have undergone variations along a parallel trajectory across my previous exhibitions. In my solo exhibition Middle Story, they emerged as the Director / Observer, the Accomplice, and the Performer, embarking on a journey through the polar extremes of absence and excess. In The World as Exchange X, they appeared as the Meteorite Hunter, Clarity, and Black Horse—characters positioned at the intersection of physical and metaphorical space, where mythology, poetics, and cosmic equations wove the threads of the narrative. These figures proposed a paradigm for constructing a new world, an imaginary domain that exists beyond equivalent relationships.
In Tuning Pegs, these three figures serve as a kind of prequel to those past narratives. They become the shadows that orchestrate the fragmented world, drifting through the gaps between unremembered existences, the worn edges of bookshelves, and spaces of disjointed bodies.
People who form a discordant community within an unfamiliar space, the fragile balance of the incomplete, the state of becoming other… These figures are both summoned and performed, yet they simultaneously breach the boundaries of the frame. This exhibition delves into the solidarity of those who not only design spaces of darkness but actively construct the reverse side of that darkness. A single character, voicing multiple people, enacts a role while also dissolving into the periphery. The unseen choreographer of the theater exists precisely through absence, while the edges beyond the stage hesitate momentarily, drawing the audience toward a trembling point of fascination.
The story begins the moment the theater lights go out, when disappearance itself is revealed.