Picto New York presents Yuji Watanabe: 妖怪と風景, Yōkai and Landscapes, on view from 15 October through 15 December 2026, the photographer's U.S. solo debut. Curated by Charli Sas, the exhibition brings together Watanabe's Yōkai series with a new body of landscapes photographed across Japan, moving between apparition and absence, folklore and place. Figures drawn from Japanese folklore appear alongside mountains, forests, caves, waterfalls, and still bodies of water, landscapes in which nothing supernatural is visible, yet where emptiness gradually begins to feel inhabited.
Yuji Watanabe, based between Paris and Tokyo, is recognized as one of the definitive global talents in the "Contemporary100." After building a distinguished career photographing for international fashion and cultural publications, he developed a parallel artistic practice rooted in analogue processes. For this exhibition, he captures the haunting presence of yōkai on large-format 8×10 Polaroid, while filming the poetry of environments using ONE INSTANT peel-apart film. The photographs are arranged in the manner of an emaki, the Japanese illustrated handscroll, inviting viewers to move through the images as a continuous narrative.
Yōkai are supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore, ranging from malevolent monsters to mischievous shapeshifters to benevolent guardians, among them the kappa, a water-dwelling imp; the tengu, a bird-like mountain spirit; and the nurikabe, an invisible wall that blocks travelers' paths. Watanabe's Yōkai series gives bodily form to these spirits, creatures, and transformed objects, with a tactile, immediate quality that emphasizes their physical presence. A soundscape by Pinkcourtesyphone, the sound artist and composer Richard Chartier, runs through the exhibition, extending this sense of uncertainty beyond the image.
The work follows Watanabe's solo exhibition at 229GALLERY in Tokyo in 2024 and marks a significant expansion of his practice into the dialogue between figures and the places, stories, and associations that surround them.
Picto New York