Exhibitions

Mihoko Ogaki Milky Way—Breath

• September 11(Fri)—October 17 (Sat), 2026
• Hours: Tuesday—Saturday, 11:00-18:00
• Closed: Sundays, Mondays and Public Holidays
• Opening: September 11 (Fri), 17:00-19:00

KEN NAKAHASHI is pleased to present Mihoko Ogaki’s solo exhibition Milky Way—Breath, from Friday, September 11 to Saturday, October 17, 2026.

To speak of the human being is, inevitably, to speak of the universe.

Between the faintest points of light and the human body at its own scale, held within an all-enveloping darkness, Ogaki has consistently sought out the single thread of light running between humanity and the cosmos.

Ogaki's signature Milky Way series comprises three-dimensional installations that render the human body as a source of galactic light. The countless points of light emerging from darkness stand as symbols for the many emotions concealed within us, while also recalling that the elements making up our bodies were themselves once fragments of stars.

This exhibition presents two new works from the series.

Ogaki has long been drawn to the body's passage toward aging and death. In recent years, she has continued her practice while working in elder care at a day service facility, and the accumulated experience of directly touching, observing, and speaking with bodies each day has become a wellspring for her work. In her process—modeling an original form in clay, taking a plaster cast, and shaping the final figure in FRP—subtle distortions gradually emerge that differ from the initial form. "That distortion," Ogaki says, "is precisely the kind that can only emerge in a body that has aged." Rather than rejecting the minute discrepancies that arise between hand and material, Ogaki accepts them as the authentic form of the work itself. This accumulated dialogue between body and material is deeply reflected in the new works presented in this exhibition.

In preparing for this exhibition, Ogaki returned once more to the themes she has explored since the earliest stages of the Milky Way series. While her early works consistently approached the human body as a cosmic presence, her perspective has grown more urgent through her day-to-day experience of confronting the body in the context of caregiving.

This exhibition presents new works centered on the body's movement toward death. Through countless perforations across its surface, light spills forth, dissolving the contours of the physical form as it diffuses—as though breathing—into the surrounding space. Rather than depicting the end of an individual life, the work envisions a world in which the body dissolves into light, quietly returning to the great circulation of the cosmos.

Amid the ceaseless flow of time and our connection to the universe, what kind of beings are we, as humans?

We hope this exhibition offers a quiet moment for reflection on our own bodies and existence.

Mihoko Ogaki

Artist. Born in Toyama Prefecture in 1973. Lives and works in Ibaraki Prefecture. After graduating from Aichi Prefectural University of the Arts, Ogaki studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany. Following sixteen years of practice in Germany, she returned to Japan in 2010. She has developed large-scale installations exploring the human body and the cosmos both in Japan and internationally. Her major exhibitions include Milky Way–before the beginning–after the end 2021 (Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panel, 2021), The Human Body as a Microcosmos: Art, Anatomy and Astrology (Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, 2019), Threshold (KEN NAKAHASHI, 2017), and Mihoko Ogaki: Project N 54 (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2013).