Yuko Hasegawa on Curatorial Practice at Pace Tokyo
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At a time when contemporary art circulates rapidly across borders, curatorial work is often expected to provide context, explanation, or even resolution. Yet the talk held on January 30 at Pace Tokyo suggested a quieter, more measured approach. Bringing together curator and critic Yuko Hasegawa and cultural scholar Pedro Erber, the discussion focused less on comparison and more on how artistic sensibilities take shape through lived experience.
Hasegawa spoke about Japan and Brazil not as parallel art histories, but as places that encountered modernity under different pressures and at different speeds. From this perspective, what connects artists across these contexts is not style or ideology, but an attention to time, physical presence, and the act of perception itself. Her remarks reflected a long-standing curatorial position: exhibitions do not need to explain everything, but should allow works to remain open, receptive, and unresolved.
This approach is evident in the current exhibition at Pace Tokyo , featuring works by Tomie Ohtake and Marina Perez Simão. Ohtake, born in Japan and active for decades in Brazil, developed an abstract language that resists dramatic gesture. Her paintings unfold slowly, built from subtle shifts of color and form, carrying a sense of duration rather than assertion. They feel less like statements and more like records of sustained attention.
In contrast, Marina Perez Simão’s paintings register the body more directly. Her surfaces bear the marks of movement and contact, revealing painting as an act performed in real time. Shown together, the two practices are not positioned as successive or comparable, but simply allowed to coexist—each occupying its own rhythm and pace.
During the talk, this exhibition was also discussed in relation to Pace Tokyo’s upcoming presentation of Robert Nava, whose first solo exhibition in Japan will open in February. While stylistically distinct, Nava’s work continues a shared interest in painting as a physical and energetic act. Seen together, these exhibitions suggest that Pace Tokyo is less concerned with defining a single narrative than with sustaining a long-term inquiry into how painting remains relevant through presence, intensity, and material engagement.
Rather than offering conclusions, the talk reaffirmed a curatorial stance grounded in restraint. By allowing differences to remain visible and meanings to stay unfinished, the exhibition program at Pace Tokyo demonstrates how curation can function as a form of attention—one that respects time, distance, and the viewer’s own capacity to look.
Exhibitions
Robert Nava: Supercharger
February 19 – April 1, 2026
1F; Azabudai Hills Garden Plaza-A
5-8-1 Toranomon, Minato-ku
Tokyo
