Contemporary Art Gallery

Outline

Contemporary Art Gallery
EXHIBITION
CRITERIUM

CRITERIUM 102Takuto Shiromaru

February 28 – May 6, 2026 10:00-18:00 (last admission at 17:30)

CRITERIUM 102 presents the work of Takuto Shiromaru (b. 1992, in Hyogo). Using sound and poetry as his primary artistic pathways, Shiromaru approaches social, historical, and emotional dimensions of place through its people and landscapes.
Having shifted his base from Yamagata to Mito and now to Oarai in Ibaraki, Shiromaru develops his practice by entwining his experience of terrain with the residue of different periods of time. Tracing the words and verses that emerge from each locale he pursues his own forms of expression that weave together sound, language, gesture, and public records and personal memories. His ongoing works include Translating the Voice of Poets into Song (since 2016), in which he sings the words of poets such as Kenji Miyazawa and Chuya Nakahara to probe resonances between the words and lived experiences; in FREESTYLUS (since 2021), which captures phrases crafted along walking rhythms and city noise; and Or Like the Tides (since 2024), his first solo presentation, in which the exhibition itself shifts and transforms through its contact with space and people inhabiting in it. Incorporating both his and others’ physicalities—sometimes including their absence—Shiromaru unfolds a practice grounded in attentiveness to landscape and embodied experience.
For this exhibition, Shiromaru turns his gaze to the neighbourhood of Oarai, the coastal town where he currently resides, presenting new work developed through his observation to the currents of people, nature and time that flow through the region.

Takuto Shiromaru

Profile

Born in 1992, in Hyogo. Studied Musicology at Osaka University of Arts. Shiromaru is currently based in Oarai-machi in Ibaraki, after moving around between other cities including Yamagata and Mito.