8 Mar – 6 Apr 2025
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Aoyama | Meguro is pleased to announce Hiroaki Morita’s solo exhibition, Time / Quake, featuring his latest installation work.
Hiroaki Morita (b. 1973) is an artist who excavates overlooked phenomena and events embedded in daily life and reconstructs them into new contexts using unique methods. In his 2011 solo exhibition Time Quake, he presented an installation featuring 24 fluorescent lights suspended in a grid formation from the ceiling, abstracting his experience of the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. This work was highly acclaimed for its symbolic approach to re-examining the essence of disasters.
Japan is widely known as an earthquake-prone country. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, over 1,500 perceptible earthquakes are recorded annually on average. Among them, the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, left a profound impact both socially and personally, compounded by the subsequent tsunami and nuclear power plant disaster. Since then, earthquakes have continued to occur frequently, becoming a part of daily life for some, while remaining a disruptive and unforgettable experience for others, depending on the region or circumstances. The perception of earthquakes varies significantly based on geographical location, household conditions, economic factors, and access to information.
This exhibition compresses 13 years of seismic events—spanning from March 11, 2011, to December 2024—into a single day (24 hours), removing them from their geographical and individual contexts to create a unified experience.
Within the gallery space, a digital clock-shaped lighting installation suspended from the ceiling reproduces the tremors of earthquakes according to their recorded times. Accompanying the lighting are earthquake lists detailing epicenters, dates, and magnitudes, as well as individual seismic events represented through symbolic letter-cut signs. These elements allow viewers to engage with the layered phenomenon of earthquakes both materially and symbolically.
This exhibition, Time / Quake, not only re-examines the phenomenon of earthquakes but also seeks to explore the raw impact of natural disasters that suddenly disrupt daily life, presenting them devoid of ethical interpretations.
We invite you to experience this uniquely reconstructed timeline of 13 years of seismic records in Time / Quake.
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Hiroaki Morita
Born in 1973 in Fukui Prefecture, Japan. Completed the B Seminar Schooling System in 1998 and graduated with
a Master’s degree in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2002.
Selected Solo Exhibitions :
Time Quake (Aoyama | Meguro, 2011)
From Something to Something Else (Aoyama | Meguro, 2016)
End of Light (See Saw gallery + hibit, 2019)
Selected Group Exhibitions:
Happiness in Everyday Life (Art Tower Mito, 2008)
Touch the World (Borderless Art Museum NO-MA, Omihachiman, 2009)
MOT Annual 2012: Making Situations, Editing Landscapes (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2012)
Jump (Towada Art Center, Aomori, 2015)
Absorption / Radiation (19th Hokuto Building + Former Tokorozawa Kindergarten, 2019)
Rooms and Gardens: Forms of Separation (Musashino Art University Museum, 2020)
Food and Contemporary Art Part 9 (BankART Station, Yokohama, 2023)
Selected International Group Exhibitions:
Mono No Aware: The Beauty of Things (The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2013)
Triple Point of Matter (Fondation d’art Fiminco, Paris, 2017)
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Dates : March 8, 2025 – April 6, 2025 Fri: 13:00 – 20:00, Sat, Sun, Mon, Holidays: 13:00 – 18:00 (Closed: Tue, Wed, Thu) ＊This exhibition will be temporarily open on Tuesday, March 11.
Venue : Aoyama Meguro, 2-30-6 Kamimeguro, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-0051, Japan