WALLS TOKYO is pleased to announce Gaku Kakizaki solo exhibition “Komorebi: Places of Light” from November 13 to December 13, 2025.

Kakizaki majored in oil painting at Musashino Art University, completing his master's degree in 2012. Using a palette knife to create delicate textures, he primarily paints oil works featuring familiar landscapes and still lifes. This exhibition focuses on the uniquely Japanese concept of “komorebi” (dappled sunlight), showcasing and selling approximately 15 works, primarily new pieces.

Thursday, November 13, 2025 - Saturday, December 13, 2025
Open: Wed-Sat 12:00-19:00
Closed: Sun, Mon, Tue

 

Kakizaki, who is “drawn to the play of sunlight filtering through trees,” was born and raised near Jingu Gaien and Shinjuku Gyoen in Tokyo. These urban oases have become the original landscape imprinted in his memory. The nature he depicts is not a transcendent force that instills awe or fear. Rather, it is nature as a place where people can rest and find healing. The dappled light falling on the paths between the trees is a gift from nature that people can safely approach and touch.

When viewed up close, Kakizaki’s paintings appear to be nothing more than clusters of protruding paint. Yet, when seen from a distance, a landscape surrounded by trees emerges. His scenes overflowing with trees, water, and light are indeed beautiful. But he is not attempting to capture the fleeting shifts of light, nor is he trying to render a picturesque scene sentimentally. For Kazaki, forest paths and lakesides are motifs one can face with familiarity and at a comfortable distance, without attaching special meaning to them. Rather, it seems he perceives all these landscapes as mere “changes of color.” The conviction that three-dimensional form is no more than an illusion until touched by hand, and that the world perceived visually is nothing but an accumulation of color changes, can be felt radiating from his canvases.

Moreover, he seems to “entrust” something to oil paint itself, building his surfaces not through an analytical grasp of light and color, but by allowing the medium to act. What comes through his seemingly brusque, layered strokes is not so much a fondness for oil paint as a kind of trust in it. This posture of leaving things to the paint, of accepting the effects it generates, surely shapes his landscapes that ceaselessly traverse between abstraction and figuration.

 

▽Published Images
top. Sun-dappled Path in the Morning Light 2025, Oil on canvas, 91 × 116 cm
1. Waterside with Autumn Leaves 2022, Oil on canvas, 112 × 162 cm
2. Blue Sun-dappled Path 2023, Oil on canvas, 10 × 14.8 cm
3. Sun-dappled Path 2023, Oil on canvas, 27 × 22 cm

Gaku Kakizaki
instagram

1981　Born in Tokyo
2010　Graduated from Musashino Art University
2012　Completed Graduate School, Musashino Art University
Currently a member of the Shutai Art Association

Selected Recent Exhibitions
2025
Gaku Kakizaki Oil Painting Exhibition, Matsuzakaya Ueno (Tokyo)
Gaku Kakizaki Oil Painting Exhibition, Isetan Urawa (Saitama)

2023
Gaku Kakizaki Oil Painting Exhibition, Matsuzakaya Ueno (Tokyo)
Gaku Kakizaki Exhibition, WALLS TOKYO (Tokyo)
Gaku Kakizaki Oil Painting Exhibition, Isetan Urawa (Saitama)

2022
Gaku Kakizaki Oil Painting Exhibition, Odakyu Department Store (Tokyo)
Gaku Kakizaki Oil Painting Exhibition, Isetan Urawa (Saitama)

Public Collection
Tama Shinkin Bank (Museum Collection)