Atsushi Kaga Just another human experience

8 Nov 2025-22 Feb 2026

Overview

Educated in Tokyo and Dublin, Atsushi Kaga merges Japanese storytelling cultures from Manga and anime with the work of painters from Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539-1610) to James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). Working across paintings, installations and sculpture, Kaga creates an alternate universe with a cast of characters exploring cultural politics, the quest for personal identity, and the struggles of daily life. Layering the work with dark humour, social satire and existential philosophy, their uncertain surroundings are neither interiors nor exteriors, but inner realms. At their centre is the figure of ‘Usatchi’ – the diminutive form of ‘usagi’, the Japanese word for rabbit – but also a near anagram of the artist’s name, Atsushi.

This commissioned exhibition will transform Gallery 1 into a temple invoking the four seasons of the year. A memento mori of sorts, it presents a series of encounters between one’s inner world and the natural phenomenon of the exterior world, exposing the fragility of life and the fleeting nature of all things.

Atsushi Kaga (born 1978) is a Japanese artist who lives and works between Ireland and Japan. Kaga studied Fine Art at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin, graduating in 2005, and made a critically acclaimed first solo museum exhibition at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include: The world will not end tomorrow, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco (2024); Ukiyo-e, Encounters, mother’s tankstation, Art Basel Hong Kong (2024); Things Will Carry Us Through, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2023) and your memorabilia floats in the air, mother’s tankstation, London (2022), with other notable solo exhibitions at Maho Kubota Gallery, Tokyo, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, Galeria Leme, São Paolo, and Galerie Nicolas Krupp, Basel. He participated in the Location One International Residency Programme, New York (2012); the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York (2011).