Ephemeral time, eternal world: Tsuyoshi Hisakado

^{Ota Fine Arts Singapore is delighted to present “Ephemeral time, eternal world”, a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Tsuyoshi Hisakado. Well-recognized for his immersive installations weaving together sound, light and sculptural elements, Hisakado presented a large-scale solo exhibition "Dear Future Person," at Fosun Foundation, Shanghai in 2025, where he presented the first video installation of his career, examining our relations to nature and the evolving forms of human civilisation. In this exhibition, Hisakado further develops this concept, bringing together a new multi-channel video installation and the largest presentation of his ongoing crossfades series of works on paper in Singapore. Underlying the exhibition is a quiet yet urgent question: as our technology draws ever closer to the forces of nature, is our evolution heading in the right direction?}

^{Upon entering the gallery, visitors find themselves in a world of blue. Lining the walls within this expanse of blue is Hisakado’s crossfades #4 series (2018 – present, ongoing) of works on paper, rendered this time entirely in light blue ink that echoes the colour of the room. Underneath a layer of blotches, splashes, or strokes of ink, Hisakado has silkscreened a spiral of minute numbers derived from the mathematical constant pi (π), visible only upon close observation. To Hisakado, the pi, which never ends and never repeats the same sequence, is akin to time itself and to the flow of everyday life. In these latest works, this interplay takes on a further dimension: over the precise silkscreened spiral of numbers, Hisakado layers gestures of the hand recalling natural phenomena such as gravity, fog, rain and quake. The traces of human labour set against the computed order beneath hint at how even the systems we build with confidence remain open to forces beyond our control.} 

^{This tension unfolds even more vividly in the new video installation. Across several monitors, each screening a different image in synchronised progression, parallel streams of time run side by side. On one screen, light bulbs pulse slowly as if they were breathing, evoking the bodily rhythm we carry within ourselves; on another, a robot arm turns the sides of an all-white Rubik's cube – a puzzle with no fixed answer that it keeps trying to solve nonetheless; on yet another, a pencil lead runs along a spiral form, tracing the days that seem to repeat yet spiral outwards. At times the screens act as one, and at times they switch to different scenes, suggesting how these different orders of time – of the body, the machine and the everyday – coexist within our lives largely unnoticed. In the final scene, the five screens merge into a single image of the sea. Across it runs the white geometric lines of blob tracking, a computer-vision technology that detects and follows the movement of whatever it observes, breaking it down into data that can be analysed and predicted. Turned upon the waves, it renders even the natural world legible, its motions traced, modelled and replicable. Hisakado imagines that in the near future, once quantum computing becomes part of everyday life, such movements may become fully reproducible. This ever-growing capacity to take apart and remake the world leaves us feeling like we understand and even hold sway over a nature far greater than ourselves, and Hisakado quietly asks whether this is the direction we should be moving in, knowing we cannot stop.} 

^{The exhibition title ”Ephemeral time, eternal world” carries two meanings: that which continues beyond time, space and boundaries, and being partway through a journey that has no answer, or in which everything is an answer. Ota Fine Arts Singapore invites you to experience Tsuyoshi Hisakado's latest works, an extension and development of his practice to date.}

This exhibition coincides with the Singapore Gallery Month (15 Aug – 13 Sep 2026) organised by the Art Galleries Association of Singapore. For more information, visit www.agas.org.sg/sgm