Takeshi Yasura "Hak Hack"
Cadan Otemachi
Until Apr 18
SHARE
Artists
Takeshi Yasura
KOTARO NUKAGA will be pleased to present Takeshi Yasura’s solo exhibition ‘HAK HACK’ at CADAN Otemachi, from April 1 to April 18, 2026.
Yasura completed graduate studies in sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts and at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. He is based in both France and Japan. His practice challenges the boundaries between human and nonhuman, subject and object, realigning all forms of existence along a single horizontal axis to question how we perceive the world. He has participated in major exhibitions including ‘The 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts’ (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2025) and ‘Ecology: Dialogue on Circulation’（Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum, Tokyo, 2024）. In February 2026, he presented the solo exhibition ‘TOTEM ORGA（H）’ at the Kohoku Water Reclamation Center, an active sewage treatment facility in Yokohama. There, works were arranged along the facility’s functional flow axis in an attempt to reconstruct the depths of urban infrastructure as a form of contemporary totemism.
The building housing the present exhibition contains the Zenigamechō Pump Station, which operates from the basement through the third floor, drawing wastewater from the Otemachi and Marunouchi areas and sending it onward to a water reclamation center. In this space where sewage infrastructure and exhibition space coexist, Yasura forms and arranges bricks composed of 88% sewage sludge incinerator ash—a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process. BLOCK is a work constructed from these bricks. Human waste, once processed at water reclamation centers, is reduced to ash. It is then melted and refined into raw materials for cement, road base, and building blocks that give shape to the city. Rather than returning to nature, it circulates endlessly within the closed loop of society. Without knowing it, we build our cities upon our own waste and walk across it every day. The figure “88%” inscribed on the bricks corresponds to the ecumene—the inhabited portion of the earth, which is said to account for 88% of the land surface. If the ground we have traversed, cultivated, and paved is itself composed of layers of excretion, processing, and reconstruction, then this cycle extends far beyond the pump station beneath our feet to encompass the entirety of human habitation.
In addition to the BLOCK, the exhibition presents works including a reproduction of part of Millet’s The Gleaners rendered on washi made from rice straw. The act depicted in The Gleaners —the impoverished gathering what remains after the harvest—was once a cycle that functioned naturally within the community. Today, however, that cycle has sunk beneath the surface of the city as advanced infrastructure, stripped of its pastoral texture. And yet the hierarchy embedded within this structure—who processes and who benefits—persists unchanged. By receiving ash from the sewers beneath his feet and reshaping it into bricks, Yasura renders this closed cycle visible, questioning the boundaries between city and body, waste and building material.
Yasura completed graduate studies in sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts and at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. He is based in both France and Japan. His practice challenges the boundaries between human and nonhuman, subject and object, realigning all forms of existence along a single horizontal axis to question how we perceive the world. He has participated in major exhibitions including ‘The 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts’ (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2025) and ‘Ecology: Dialogue on Circulation’（Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum, Tokyo, 2024）. In February 2026, he presented the solo exhibition ‘TOTEM ORGA（H）’ at the Kohoku Water Reclamation Center, an active sewage treatment facility in Yokohama. There, works were arranged along the facility’s functional flow axis in an attempt to reconstruct the depths of urban infrastructure as a form of contemporary totemism.
The building housing the present exhibition contains the Zenigamechō Pump Station, which operates from the basement through the third floor, drawing wastewater from the Otemachi and Marunouchi areas and sending it onward to a water reclamation center. In this space where sewage infrastructure and exhibition space coexist, Yasura forms and arranges bricks composed of 88% sewage sludge incinerator ash—a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process. BLOCK is a work constructed from these bricks. Human waste, once processed at water reclamation centers, is reduced to ash. It is then melted and refined into raw materials for cement, road base, and building blocks that give shape to the city. Rather than returning to nature, it circulates endlessly within the closed loop of society. Without knowing it, we build our cities upon our own waste and walk across it every day. The figure “88%” inscribed on the bricks corresponds to the ecumene—the inhabited portion of the earth, which is said to account for 88% of the land surface. If the ground we have traversed, cultivated, and paved is itself composed of layers of excretion, processing, and reconstruction, then this cycle extends far beyond the pump station beneath our feet to encompass the entirety of human habitation.
In addition to the BLOCK, the exhibition presents works including a reproduction of part of Millet’s The Gleaners rendered on washi made from rice straw. The act depicted in The Gleaners —the impoverished gathering what remains after the harvest—was once a cycle that functioned naturally within the community. Today, however, that cycle has sunk beneath the surface of the city as advanced infrastructure, stripped of its pastoral texture. And yet the hierarchy embedded within this structure—who processes and who benefits—persists unchanged. By receiving ash from the sewers beneath his feet and reshaping it into bricks, Yasura renders this closed cycle visible, questioning the boundaries between city and body, waste and building material.
Schedule Now in session | Apr 1 (Wed) 2026-Apr 18 (Sat) 2026 13 days left Opening Hours Information
| ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://kotaronukaga.com/en/news/13751/ | ||||
| Venue | Cadan Otemachi https://cadan.org/ | ||||
| Location | 1F, 2-6-3 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0004 | ||||
| Access | 5 minute walk from the Nihonbashi exit of JR Tokyo Station, 5 minute walk from exit B2 at Mitsukoshimae Station on the Ginza and Hanzomon lines. | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
Back to Articles
SHARE
No comments yet