Shuto Okayasu: Impermanence/無常

PLATO is pleased to present Impermanence/無常, a solo exhibition of new paintings by New York-based Japanese artist Shuto Okayasu, opening Thursday, October 8, with a public reception from 6–8 pm. It will be the artist's second solo show with the gallery.

Following his first exhibition with us, Okku/Beyond the Light, which focused on eternity, or okku (億劫), Okayasu turns from the idea of the infinite toward mujō (無常), the Buddhist concept of impermanence. For the artist, this means an awareness that life is constantly changing and an appreciation of the beauty found in fleeting moments.

The shift is closely connected to Okayasu’s experience of becoming a father. With two young children, the passage of time has become particularly tangible in the daily changes he observes around him: the growth of his sons, the endearing moments with beloved pets, the changing seasons of New York City. In these paintings, impermanence is not treated simply as loss, but as a reason to remain attentive to the present.

This sensibility has deep roots in Japanese art and poetry, where the passing of seasons and the brevity of natural phenomena have long been subjects of contemplation. Autumn holds a particular place within this tradition, its vivid colors accompanied by an awareness of transition. Okayasu draws on this lineage in Everything is Changing (Autumn) (2026), one of the exhibition’s central works, which depicts his wife and son playing in their New York interior garden. The painting looks to the subject and composition of Spring (1920) by Tsuchida Bakusen (1887–1936), whose oeuvre incorporated Western techniques into the vocabulary of traditional Japanese art.

Bakusen’s work also points to a broader history of exchange that informs Okayasu’s practice. He is interested in the movement of ideas between Japanese and Western artists: the influence of ukiyo-e prints (often translated as ‘pictures of the floating world’) and Japanese painting on Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism, followed by the subsequent adoption of these movements by Japanese painters in the twentieth century. For Okayasu, this circulation offers a way to consider how images and techniques acquire new meanings as they move between contexts.

In The Night Renders Everything Untitled (2026), Okayasu brings together references drawn from different religions, mythologies, and cultures. The work takes its title from a loosely translated line in a poem by Shuntaro Tanikawa (1931–2024). Under the cover of darkness, distinctions and identities begin to dissolve. The work also incorporates the cosmic microwave background (the radiation left over from the early universe) as wallpaper on the open laptop, extending the painting’s movement from the immediate world toward a more expansive space.

Cats recur in the exhibition as familiar companions whose lives unfold at a different pace from our own. Okayasu has observed how quickly they grow, making them another reminder of the limited span of an individual life. Music provides a related motif. Records, speakers, musicians, and street performers appear throughout the work, connecting repetition with impermanence: a record can be rewound, while a concert or live performance exists only in the moment it is heard.

This dichotomy is central to Swirling Eye of Sunsara (2026), inspired by Okayasu’s experience of seeing the Sun Ra Arkestra play at the Guggenheim Museum. He was drawn to Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral architecture and to the combination of cosmic sound and religious experience produced by the performance. He conceived the title “Sunsara” by combining Sun Ra with samsara, the Buddhist cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, suggesting a passage through repetition and return.

Impermanence/無常 locates the present within the interplay between disappearance and recurrence, bringing personal experience into dialogue with Japanese artistic traditions and a broader history of cultural exchange.

Shuto Okayasu is a visual artist based in New York. Okayasu’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures reflect his everyday reality and dreams, mixing eastern and western sensibilities. His work records both mundane and transcendent aspects of urban living, and the often-unpredictable scenarios he encounters in New York City. Okayasu uses drawing and photography as a reference point for his patchworked painterly collages referencing such diverse sources as film, hip-hop culture, traditional Japanese painting and woodblock prints, manga, anime, abstract expressionism, and European old masters.

Shuto Okayasu (b.1990) received his BFA from Tokyo Zokei University. He has apprenticed with two of perhaps the most well-known Japanese contemporary artists outside of Japan: Takashi Murakami (2012-13, Saitama, Japan) and Tomokazu Matsuyama (2015-2021, New York). Okayasu has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, including PLATO, New York (2026, 2025, 2024); Tang Contemporary, Hong Kong (2024); Kyoto Tsutaya, Kyoto, Japan (2024); The Rockefeller Center, New York (2023); Oil Gallery Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan (2023); Ginza Tsutaya Ginza Six, Tokyo, Japan (2022); Space 776 Gallery, New York (2021, 2020, 2018) and Greenpoint Gallery, New York (2018), among others.