Eiki Mori "Moonbow Flags"
Ken Nakahashi
Until Jan 24
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Artists
Eiki Mori
KEN NAKAHASHI is pleased to present Eiki Mori’s solo exhibition Moonbow Flags, from Friday, October 10 to Saturday, December 20, 2025.
Mori’s first solo show in two years features his new series Moonbow Flags, which combines photographic portraits with white hand-drawn shapes. Among the inspirations for these works is a slogan from the May 1968 uprising in France: Sous les pavés, la plage! (“Under the paving stones, the beach!”). Taking this phrase, which suggests the possibility of freedom lying beneath oppression, as a starting point, Mori explores the reinterpretation of established symbols by combining flags – representations of the state and its power – with geometric patterns found in everyday life, such as kitchen tiles and wallpaper.
The “moonbow” in the title refers to a rainbow generated by moonlight. Unlike a daytime rainbow, this is a phenomenon so faint that it can only be seen by intently scrutinizing the sky. The title Moonbow Flags embodies Mori’s intention to deconstruct the authority and symbolism of existing flags, and to introduce new perspectives free from fixed meanings by incorporating playfulness and chance.
For this series Mori produced approximately 24 works, using the photogram technique to superimpose previously unreleased portraits, taken over the past decade, and white shapes drawn with flags’ geometrical layouts as references. His work in the darkroom, layering the disparate elements of scenes captured on negative film and shapes drawn on acrylic panels, produced single photographic prints in which the elements exist independently while simultaneously eroding one another. This represents a departure from traditional photograms comprising objects and their silhouettes.
The geometric shapes are all hand-drawn, in the tradition of national flags and community symbols such as the rainbow flag, which have historically been hand-dyed and hand-sewn. As Mori collaborated with artisans to carry out all of the photogram and printing procedures by hand, the textures of materials and traces of the production process are embedded in the works. The white shapes were made with acrylic paint to which white correction fluid was added, subverting the correction fluid’s function of “covering” and “concealing” and instead applying translucent, glossy textures to the photographs. Mori interprets this function of correction fluid as “not rewriting the past, but subtly adding to the future. It represents a path forward, or a benediction, inhabiting the thin film of the photograph’s surface.”
In these works, blurred, transparent, and reflective shapes are constantly shifting and in flux, rendering boundaries between foreground and background, portrait and geometric pattern ambiguous. In this fluid context, spaces emerge in which repression and freedom, the state and the individual intersect, and faint phantom images of the “beach” (paradise, freedom, liberation) appear.
In intimacy (2013), Mori addressed close relationships between same-sex lovers and friends, while in Family Regained (2017), he focused on new forms of family not based on blood ties. His last solo exhibition, We Squeak (2023), presented an installation exploring the possibility of resistance through the passive act of sleeping by each individual person. In Moonbow Flags, while continuing to highlight the individual, he pivots from “sleeping” to “raising flags,” reexamining how individual acts can function within society. Where We Squeak suggested the coming together of quiet acts of resistance, Moonbow Flags presents the possibility that flags as symbols are subject to fluidity and change through the existence of each person, rendering relationships between individuals and society more visually apparent.
As with Mori’s previous works, which have inquired into connections between intimate personal memories and social norms, Moonbow Flags seeks to visualize ambiguous spaces that emerge where society and the individual, history and everyday life, authority and play intersect. We invite you to experience these works in person at the exhibition.
Mori’s first solo show in two years features his new series Moonbow Flags, which combines photographic portraits with white hand-drawn shapes. Among the inspirations for these works is a slogan from the May 1968 uprising in France: Sous les pavés, la plage! (“Under the paving stones, the beach!”). Taking this phrase, which suggests the possibility of freedom lying beneath oppression, as a starting point, Mori explores the reinterpretation of established symbols by combining flags – representations of the state and its power – with geometric patterns found in everyday life, such as kitchen tiles and wallpaper.
The “moonbow” in the title refers to a rainbow generated by moonlight. Unlike a daytime rainbow, this is a phenomenon so faint that it can only be seen by intently scrutinizing the sky. The title Moonbow Flags embodies Mori’s intention to deconstruct the authority and symbolism of existing flags, and to introduce new perspectives free from fixed meanings by incorporating playfulness and chance.
For this series Mori produced approximately 24 works, using the photogram technique to superimpose previously unreleased portraits, taken over the past decade, and white shapes drawn with flags’ geometrical layouts as references. His work in the darkroom, layering the disparate elements of scenes captured on negative film and shapes drawn on acrylic panels, produced single photographic prints in which the elements exist independently while simultaneously eroding one another. This represents a departure from traditional photograms comprising objects and their silhouettes.
The geometric shapes are all hand-drawn, in the tradition of national flags and community symbols such as the rainbow flag, which have historically been hand-dyed and hand-sewn. As Mori collaborated with artisans to carry out all of the photogram and printing procedures by hand, the textures of materials and traces of the production process are embedded in the works. The white shapes were made with acrylic paint to which white correction fluid was added, subverting the correction fluid’s function of “covering” and “concealing” and instead applying translucent, glossy textures to the photographs. Mori interprets this function of correction fluid as “not rewriting the past, but subtly adding to the future. It represents a path forward, or a benediction, inhabiting the thin film of the photograph’s surface.”
In these works, blurred, transparent, and reflective shapes are constantly shifting and in flux, rendering boundaries between foreground and background, portrait and geometric pattern ambiguous. In this fluid context, spaces emerge in which repression and freedom, the state and the individual intersect, and faint phantom images of the “beach” (paradise, freedom, liberation) appear.
In intimacy (2013), Mori addressed close relationships between same-sex lovers and friends, while in Family Regained (2017), he focused on new forms of family not based on blood ties. His last solo exhibition, We Squeak (2023), presented an installation exploring the possibility of resistance through the passive act of sleeping by each individual person. In Moonbow Flags, while continuing to highlight the individual, he pivots from “sleeping” to “raising flags,” reexamining how individual acts can function within society. Where We Squeak suggested the coming together of quiet acts of resistance, Moonbow Flags presents the possibility that flags as symbols are subject to fluidity and change through the existence of each person, rendering relationships between individuals and society more visually apparent.
As with Mori’s previous works, which have inquired into connections between intimate personal memories and social norms, Moonbow Flags seeks to visualize ambiguous spaces that emerge where society and the individual, history and everyday life, authority and play intersect. We invite you to experience these works in person at the exhibition.
Schedule Now in session | Oct 10 (Fri) 2025-Jan 24 (Sat) 2026 40 days left Opening Hours Information
Opening Reception Oct 10 (Fri) 2025 18:00 - 20:00 | ||||
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://kennakahashi.net/en/exhibitions/moonbow-flags | ||||
| Venue | Ken Nakahashi https://kennakahashi.net/en | ||||
| Location | 5F, Shinjuku bldg. 2, 3-1-32 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 160-0022 | ||||
| Access | 2 minute walk from exit C1 or C5 at Shinjuku-sanchome Station on the Marunouchi, Fukutoshin or Toei Oedo line. 6 minute walk from the South East exit of JR Shinjuku Station. | ||||
| Phone | 03-4405-9552 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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