T.T I-A 003 | KOICHI NISHIZAKA "AN INDISCRIMINATE DOMAIN"
T.T, Gion, Kyoto
April 19 to May 6, 2025
"An Indiscriminate Domain" was a collaborative exhibition between Taiga Takahashi and his friend Koichi Nishizaka, who runs the antique dealer Hakujitsu.
Where the gazes of two meet
Nishizaka's way of seeing resonates deeply with Takahashi's thinking. Antiques born from human hands reveal their essence more and more as time passes, and the two of them saw the same thing there. Tools and vessels whose value had been overlooked change their expression when seen through Nishizaka's eye, and seem to draw closer to the viewer. Just as Takahashi treated vintage clothing as symbols, the antiques Nishizaka chose carry the same symbolic quality.
For this exhibition, antiques selected by Nishizaka were placed within the total art space T.T Gion that Takahashi had conceived. From there rose the sensibility the two men shared: "the ability to see the goodness of things." The tools and vessels lining the space cross genres and boundaries with ease, prompting us to question and rethink the very habit of mind that tries to sort things into good and bad.
Toward the wisdom of non discrimination
"What is it that guides the making of things?" "What kind of meaning do we find in objects?" Questions repeated since ancient times still stand before us today. The sensibility that tries to measure the value of things through beauty and ethics has shifted along with the environment in which things are made. In our present age, where technology advances fast and social structures shake hard, the very way things are made is starting to change at the root, and the sensibility with which we receive them is being updated all the time.
What stands out in Nishizaka's approach is his stance of pulling things away from existing value systems and seeing them as they are. This connects deeply to what Buddhism calls "mubunbetsuchi," a way of knowing that grasps things as they are without splitting them into beautiful or ugly, good or bad. The antiques Nishizaka chose escape from the frames of classical art and craft, and from their categories. So what is asked here is simply to receive things as they are. In that moment, antiques suddenly turn into "mirrors" that reflect the frames and structures of society.
This exhibition asks a single question. Can we look at things not as useful goods of mass production, nor as art that has reached the peak of technique, but simply look at them? What it offers is the act of "seeing": letting go of words and concepts for a while, and returning to our original human sensibility.
